Interactive Stroke Analysis Roscoe Tanner's Serve

[johnyandell]

As a student of technique I never devalue it. I just don't agree with you about serve technique. As for the nature/training thing, again, the combination of the two is what leads to greatness.

We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one--there isn't much point in just restating the old issues any further. You think I am defeatist, and I say you are (at least partially) delusional... I can live with that dissonance.

Read Dan Coyle's book though, you'll find he's on your side of the fence--anything is possible for anyone if you just thicken the stuff that wraps around your nerves...

[GMann]

Similarities of Bob Bryan and Roscoe Tanner Serve

The style does live on today in one of the best servers in professional doubles: Bob Bryan who has a low ball toss and a quick motion.

Yes. I have noticed this also. What makes their motions even more similar is that they (Tanner and Bryan) are both left handed.

In fact, at the beginning of this thread years ago I had meant to point out that while the Bryan brothers are identical twins who have virtually the same DNA, one serves much harder than the other. If you will notice, Bob has the much bigger serve and uses the faster motion/lower toss motion. While Mike serves much slower and uses the higher toss slower motion model. This is a perfect opportunity to use something akin to the "twin studies" that scientists use to figure out environmental or situation impacts vs. genetic causes.

I believe that it is likely that Mike could probably serve a lot bigger if he worked on copying Bob's motion.

This situation also seems to confirm my general feeling that tennis strokes and power are mostly technique-based and not simply genetic or God given. I believe and have experienced that there is a "technique trick" to almost every great stroke. I know that John Y. has expressed his belief that pro level power is largely genetic, God given and mysterious "racket speed" but hopefully this fact about the Bryan brothers will allow him to reconsider this philosophy that I believe is incorrect and defeatest.

Let's all now brace ourselves for another round of this debate.

[GMann]

Who is the Serve Coach?

I know a coach who teaches all his students to hit the ball at the apex because he does. He teaches it with skill and many of his students master the low toss well. It cuts out a lot of the common errors by "sheer speed of execution" i.e. dropped elbow, kinks...problems like this are less likely to happen because there simply isn't time for them!

Hey Scotty. Is there any reason that you can't identify this coach? It would be free advertising for him/her. Who is it?

[gzhpcu]

Looking at the Tanner serve videos (careful, he is past his prime), in addition to the hip turn, I see very little shoulder rotation, and his chest does not point towards the ball. Because of his fast movement, his tossing arm does not go up much, much less stay up high. He seems to toss the ball well ahead and really lean into it. His trunk seems mostly upright, not much body snap.

Looks like there is more than one way to skin a cat...

[chuck62]

I think this has been a great thread that has answered alot of questions with regard to the old vs new school of serving. I would add two points possibly not mentioned: 1) The evidence that Roscoe used his legs extensively in his motion is shown by his physical development which was much more in the legs than in the upper body. His power came from his legs in the way Jack Nicklaus who had a similar build used his in the golf swing. A fast hip turn that started a kinetic chain of events. 2) The style does live on today in one of the best servers in professional doubles: Bob Bryan who has a low ball toss and a quick motion.

[uspta990770809]

Simple service rhythm

Hi Don,
Very nice classical service Don. Like it. Classical cross over step like Becker and Noah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmoqsgiag3g

I was hoping you might be able to see that the rhythm is not rushed, or forced; the contact demonstrates pretty good extension; and the ball only drops a couple of inches. Admittedly, the old man had lost a lot of flexibility and the "pro drop" is pretty shallow. Also, there is a decent hip and shoulder turn (although nowhere near the shoulder-over-shoulder of a Sampras) and I am pushing up off the ground until the last few inches before I contact the ball.

Ahhhh! Memories.
don

[uspta990770809]

Staying on the ground

Thing is, in the video, Vic Braden tells Roscoe that he gets so much power, because he keeps his right foot on the ground at impact!

I've always argued that there is too much emphasis on the big knee bend. I've never gotten a satisfactory answer from the biomechanists for the question you are posing right here.

In Newton/Ariel's world of equal and opposite reactions, perhaps Tanner is using a lot more hip and leg action than he gets credit for because he is keeping one foot on the ground. Or is it just that Roddick creates so much energy pushing on the ground that it takes him up into the air and then he is able to release the energy into the ball?

If it were so beneficial to bend the knees so much and jump, wouldn't we see jump pitchers in MLB, jump passers in the NFL, and jump javelin throwers in the world of track and field. If you go to the Somax video analysis of Roddick

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLf_M...eature=related

and go in 3 minutes and 25 seconds, look very carefully at his rear end. I've always tried to get my students to be sure they weren't moving backward as they hit the serve instead of moving forward into the court (current conventional serving theory calls for the RH server to land a good 8 inches to a foot or more into the court with the left foot). But if Newton's Third Law applies, then something has to go backward to balance out the forward movement of the ball and there is no force being applied to the court at the moment of impact. Somewhere between 3:25 and 3:27 you can see Roddick's rear end moving slightly, but definitely rearward against the background as he makes the final move up to the ball. The angle of the camera is somewhat deceiving, but there is no question his butt is going backwards.

I don't have the answer here. Any biomechanists out there who can offer some elucidation here, please chime in. I just know I have to get my players to
1. be able to hit the ball first with no movement of their feet in complete balance. Then I want them to

2. be able to reach up to the toss so that they are forced to take one step with the rear foot into the court, and in the direction of the ball, not off to the side; and that is with balance as well. If they can get through those steps, then I want them to

3. start pushing up with so much force that the momentum of the motion takes them up into the air landing them well inside the baseline, but still with balance. However, in no case, do I want them to actually jump into the air to hit the serve like Brian Battistone (although it works great for him)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQYOW1DlydU&feature=related

Some questions to ponder as you digest that meal today:

Would Roddick serve even bigger (according to Vic) if he kept at least one foot on the ground?

What if Brian Battistone had the groundstrokes of Andre Agassi to go with that serve; or what if Agassi had learned Battistone's serve? Better yet, what if John Isner had learned Battistone's serve? Now that's a scary picture!

And finally, shouldn't we be emphasizing better balance and cleaner service motions with deep "pro drop" positions and crisper contacts at full extension, before we spend so much energy trying to get more knee bend; something more like this

http://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/golden_legends/panchogonzales/panchogonzales.html?PGServeCourtlevelSide.mov

Happy Thanksgiving everyone,
time for me to go work on my golf swing,
don

[stroke]

Don, I thought your comments on the serve was one of the most thoughful posts I have read. Very good stuff.

[uspta990770809]

A bit cramped

Hi Don,
Yes had pumpkin pie today! My wife is a great cook!

Very nice classical service Don. Like it. Classical cross over step like Becker and Noah.

Nice comments on Roscoe Tanner serve. Interesting about the hip rotation. In any case, he was certainly doing something right. I remember reading an article on his serve in Tennis magazine back then, saying that with his fast, concerted movement and low toss, at times he would not hit the ball at full height, but be a bit cramped.

Saw him playing in Wimbledon years back. He was one of the lesser courts. I was very close to him and tremendously impressed with his exposive delivery.

I think part of the problem is with the naked eye, this motion looks more cramped than it actually is. Remember the eye takes in the total picture including the amount the ball goes above contact in most serves. This would tend to make everything look less cramped. (Perhaps??)

don

[gzhpcu]

Thing is, in the video, Vic Braden tells Roscoe that he gets so much power, because he keeps his right foot on the ground at impact!

[gzhpcu]

Hi Don,
Yes had pumpkin pie today! My wife is a great cook!

Very nice classical service Don. Like it. Classical cross over step like Becker and Noah.

Nice comments on Roscoe Tanner serve. Interesting about the hip rotation. In any case, he was certainly doing something right. I remember reading an article on his serve in Tennis magazine back then, saying that with his fast, concerted movement and low toss, at times he would not hit the ball at full height, but be a bit cramped.

Saw him playing in Wimbledon years back. He was one of the lesser courts. I was very close to him and tremendously impressed with his exposive delivery.

[uspta990770809]

A little different view- Part 2 of 2

The beauty of Tanner's serve was that he could do it so easily. Other people trying it didn't understand how he didn't ruin his arm. He DOES use his legs a great deal. Take a good look at the 2nd video about 13 or 14 left arrow clicks back from contact with the ball and check the angle of his knees. We can't see the right knee clearly, but it is almost the same as the left which is clearly bent somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees, perhaps even a little more. I didn't put a protractor on it. (Phil?) In fact, his knee bend is timed perfectly to increase the "pro drop" and benefit from the stretch reflex at the shoulder joint and we know this is one of the primary benefits of the leg action - pulling that slingshot back a little further.

Then, if you go back to the first video and look at the "pro drop" position in the slow motion view (which the regular speed of video number two does not capture), you will see that Roscoe's "pro drop" is pretty deep indeed. No it is not as deep as Sampras, but the tip of the racket head is down by the bottom of his pants (admittedly shorter ...I couldn't bring myself to wear the Fila shorts at the time...the Tachinni's Jesse [???last name-distributor in NY] gave me to wear down to the Missouri Valley Circuit were bad enough, and then trying to get someone in Oklahoma City in 1978 to spring for $40 or $50 for a shirt or a pair of shorts...memories). Also, the last two videos are a significantly older Roscoe and he doesn't even have the flexibility he demonstrates in the first video which is probably also after he turned 30.

As for the hip turn being less than the amplitude of the big hip turns of today's servers, you have to realize that the currency of note here is racket head speed. Someone who turns the hips a lesser distance (less than 90 degrees as opposed to what might seem quite a bit more than 90 for some of today's servers) can still be generating a lot more speed if the hip turn is taking place in a much smaller amount of time, and I think it you take a good look at Tanner vs some of the server's you are comparing him to, he takes significantly less time to make the turn. The big motion may develop a bigger leap into the air, but I doubt it comes close to the hip speed Roscoe is demonstrating in even the video in which he is well past his prime. Take a look at the information on hip speed on the Somax Performance site. We had a reference in a recent thread to Roddick's serve breakdown there. It's really pretty interesting. Go about 3 min 15 seconds in to get to the part about hip speed. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLf_M...eature=related

My conclusion is Roscoe had a tremendous hip turn. You are really missing the big picture when you say he was just serving with his arm. Let's say he is going just 75 degrees, but in half the time of the guy going 110 degrees; his speed is the equivalent of 150 degrees. I doubt if the difference was that much, but when you consider what Pritchard at Somax is saying, that difference in hip speed is multiplied 16 times as it is converted into racket head speed. That's a lot.

As for the difficulty of holding this serve together, Stotty, it's very hard to learn this rhythm. Some people just can't get close to it and shouldn't make much of an effort to try. But if you can do it and learn it well, the timing forces you to stay aggressive. You have to think of it a little like a Ferrari. If you keep that Ferrari tuned up and in good shape, it should always beat the BMW. But if you have to make a cross country drive, much less drive the car for years, the BMW will zoom ahead as the Ferrari spends so much time in the shop. The rhythm of getting to the ball early forces you to toss correctly, but imagine shooting a basket from 2 1/2 feet from the basket. The toss that has to drop 2 1/2 feet has to travel another 5 feet from when it leaves the tosser's hand before the ball is hit. If the toss is 2.5 feet to the contact point, Tanner is only tossing the ball 1/3 the distance of the person who tosses it up and lets it drop. They are shooting from 7 1/2 feet from the basket. Ever thought of it that way?!

I have a theory about the toss and rhythm that we will talk about another time, but I think with the right rock based on gravity, you can make this motion more like the BMW. The way Roscoe lifts the racket instead of letting it swing means it requires a lot of practice to keep it sharp. I don't try to teach this early a hit, but I do try to get my players to hit the ball within a few (4-6) inches of the top of the toss. I said I try. Everyone has to find a rhythm that works for them. To me, the lynchpin that holds everything together is the rock, whether it is back to front like Sampras or front to back to front like Agassi and my favorite pro serve, Michael Stich. Every once in a while I'll get someone who just comes together better catching it right at the top. Then I'm quite insistent that they not rush the backswing, simply not let it slow down. Below is a link to my own service motion 25 years ago when it was already 10 years past its' prime. I give the clip with just the service motion to students to play on QuickTime Pro in the "loop" mode so they can get a sense of the rhythm. You can almost get that feeling by hitting the play button again just as the clip ends on Youtube. And take it easy on me. I was already almost 38 years old, I was the Tournament Director for the event, AND we had to get out of the water and off the jetskis just before the match (I won the "Grand Prix" prize in the tournament for finishing second in the jetski competition and reaching the semis of the tennis tournament which we lost 7-6, 7-6, 7-6 (not a misprint).

Here are the links for my serve:

the full point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv6cdI6-QtY

just the serve:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmoqsgiag3g

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
don

Phil, do you celebrate your early years in the States with a little turkey and pumpkin pie today?

[uspta990770809]

A little different view- Part 1 of 2

I think, as has been pointed out here, few people really understand how to hit the serve at the top of the toss. (As the first video and the circle clearly show, Roscoe did not hit the ball on the way up.) I understand Brody's argument about additional topspin for free from the higher toss, and it certainly has to be considered, but there also is a trade off in the degree of difficulty in hitting a falling ball as opposed to one that is standing still. In the extreme, would you rather have a lot of time and hit a really high lob before it bounces (which you usually should do so your opponent can't get back in position) or would you rather hit a somewhat lower lob that still allows you to get full extension and position (personally, I liked going up for the offensive lobs when I could still jump, but no, I'm not talking about aggressive topspin, ...just old-fashioned flat to underspin offensive lobs).

Consider for a second, how much time we are actually talking about

In a tenth of a second a ball drops
{(.1sec x 32 fps/s [terminal velocity at .1sec] +0[initial velocity])/2} x (.1sec) = .16 ft = 1.92 inches.

In two tenths of a second, it's .604 ft = 7.25 inches and now moving over 6 fps.

In three tenths of a second, it's 1.44 ft = 17.28 inches and now moving over 9.6 fps which is approximately 6.5 mph. That's not very fast, unless you compare it to 3.2 fps at the end of one-tenth of a second after the ball begins to drop. Remember, Brian and John's recent articles that showed how much happens in the last tenth of a second before impact. Also, the sweet spot allows a margin of error of a couple of inches, and the ball is in a two inch area for two-tenths of a second (two inches up and two inches down).

Excuse me. I went to Harvey Mudd and I kind of like numbers. Up to a point.

So back to how to hit the ball at the top of the toss. I had a pretty good serve in college and the early 70's with a toss that dropped a few inches before I hit the ball...certainly less than a foot. I also had a pretty big "bow" and that was putting some strain on my back so I decided to shorten things up a little bit and try to catch the ball right at the top. It's a difficult rhythm to learn, but there is a legitimate rationale that if everything has to fit together just right, it will hold together better under pressure (i.e. BMW parts had much smaller tolerances and variabilities than American parts in the old days...I hope that's not true anymore). And I know I did actually hit it at the top of the toss because I had a portable video camera and recording system that did slow motion in the mid-70's (wish I still had the camera or at least a couple of the tapes, but I traded the system to Hopman for a couple of more weeks at his camp in Largo in 1978). I would go out on a court at the River Club in Hastings-on-Hudson and set up the camera and practice and review to be sure I was catching the ball right at the top. And I did! Not sure how much it helped me though. But I thought there was an advantage to catching the ball early.

As someone else pointed out in the thread, it is harder to see where the serve is going. Receivers are used to seeing the ball go up, settle and begin to drop and then be hit. That gives them a moment to focus on the ball and the cue for the eye to focus is generally the ball stopping and reversing direction as it drops. Hitting the ball at the top of the toss deprives the receiver's eyes of this moment to focus and it's a kind of "hey, where did the ball go". That's also why it's so important to get your players to focus on the ball as it leaves the server's tossing hand so that their eyes will subconsciously pick up what's going on in the background as the racket approaches the ball. It is not a question of trying to watch the racket and then switching your eye to the ball at the last minute - too tough! You might try that on ground strokes, but I think good players do that with their peripheral vision as they watch the ball. (This is what real anticipation is about; putting your body in a position to be a slave to your eyes and being able to react to your eye's commands as soon as possible...not guessing.)

So back to how you hit this thing. In the 60's and 70's, there was a kind of standard mantra of hands down and up together and while there certainly were exceptions, most good players followed this dictum. You had models like Stan Smith and John Newcombe. The real differences we were concerned with was whether the palm should turn and face outward as it swung back like Smith or if it should stay facing your body like Newcombe. I think we have learned since then that it is better to keep the palm facing the body like Newcombe because it loads the shoulder a little better (I think it helps you get further into early external rotation). If you look in the stroke archives at the Legends and Modern Legends, you see mostly hands down and up together. Granted, Budge is a little bit of the modern staggered rhythm, but he was the exception. Even McEnroe and Lendl were basically down and up together. McEnroe changed the whole dynamic by changing the direction he was swinging the racket, but he didn't let the ball drop much more than a foot, if that. Lendl, who would be considered unremarkable in this respect today, was considered to have a very high toss for a player of his caliber.(I know I'm in dangerous territory here and John videotaped these guys so I hope I'm not too far wrong, but I'm sure John will correct me if I am.) If Doug Eng ran his rhythm checks on a representative sample of tour pros in 1975, much less 1965, I think he would find a much more homogenous rhythm pattern than what we find today. And I think he would also find a lot more rocking front to back to front like Smith, Newcombe, Connors and far less just front to back like Laver.

So the hands go down and up together, and as you release the ball the racket is reaching the "trophy" position with the racket head pointing up. (And in Tanner's case, the backswing is somewhat abbreviated as he lifts the racket rather than letting it swing straight back.) Then as the ball continues to rise to the top of the toss, the racket dropped behind the back and into the "pro drop" position. The ball would then sit in that position at your full extension, plus or minus about 2 inches, for about a tenth of a second (two-tenths if you count the last two inches as the ball approaches its' apex), and we know from Brian Gordon's work that it takes just a tenth of a second for that last move up to the ball. At that time (60's, 70's) it was not uncommon for players to let the racket move back under the influence of gravity (something I still advocate strongly today) which meant that the racket slowed down a little as the ball was leaving the server's hand and then picking up speed again as it dropped down to the "pro drop" and went up to the ball. At some point, I realized that what Roscoe was doing was not so much that he was accelerating the racket with great force before the final move up to the ball; he was just never letting the racket head slow down at all once it started on its' upward path from the bottom of the backswing. If you looked at Smith's serve, you could see a fast-easy-fast kind of a rhythm. The racket head never actually stopped, but it almost looked like it did if you just watched his hand or arm because he was waiting for the racket to fall easily into the "pro drop" and then he turned on the acceleration again. Roscoe, instead, maintained the racket head speed that he had at the bottom of the backswing and never allowed the racket head to slow down at all. And when he swung the racket up in a slightly abbreviated backswing, he didn't generate a lot of racket head momentum perpendicular to the plane in which he was trying to swing the racket to the target, although he might have gotten a little extra external rotation; still he got the racket moving in the correct plane up to the ball early enough to have a good "pro drop". Once you understood how to do that, you could reproduce the early hit at the top of the toss without forcing yourself and spraining your shoulder in the process or losing all control. But a lot of people got very frustrated trying to emulate what Roscoe was doing because they were trying to catch up to the ball too late in the motion.

[stotty]

I feel there are pros and cons of a high versus low toss. My toss is high-ish which I feel allows time for micro adjusments in the action (after all, no one throws the ball in precisely the same place every time). The extreme low toss allows little or no chance to make micro adjustments, so it can have real off days, certainly for amateur players.

It's funny, too, the "players innovate, coaches follow" theory. It suggests coaches have held players back for large chunks of history, sticking to tried and trusted coaching methods and boxing students in them. I remember being taught a closed stance religiously when I was a kid in the 70s...took me ages to unlearn it in my twenties!

[johnyandell]

Uh, I doubt it. If that was true think at lot of today's players would have figured that out--just like they do everything else...