The Push Serve and the Pull Serve

[don_budge]

The Living Proof...Roger Federer (and The Great John McEnroe)

Interesting that these two names have been brought into this discussion. Platform or Pinpoint? Push or Pull? Well...the proof is in the pudding. Surely there have been great pinpoint servers.

But I will say this...I was so impressed how Roger Federer was serving out the matches at the 2017 Australian Open. It was a thing of beauty how once he smelled the finish line he was like a surgeon with a deft scalpel. So efficient...not wasting any points at all. Once he was down the stretch run in his matches it was just amazing how he mowed them down. It was like he was striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth.

John McEnroe at his zenith was much the same. For all of his antics and nonsense at times...he was so zeroed in and focused when it came down to the moment of truth in a match. He was like a matador...just waiting to plunge it in for the kill.

Pete Sampras comes to mind as well. Another great server out of the platform mold.

So based on this sort of evidence there really isn't any argument that the platform is the teaching model...even though there have been some great service motions like tennis_chiro's and stotty's that use the pinpoint.

[don_budge]

Jerzy's stats for double faults is certainly poor, and he ought to serve more aces. His first serve percentage is decent, however; higher than Sampras, for example. But this is where stats are misleading. A serve can be far better or worse than its stats in my view. Another way to look at it is how much underlying damage is a serve doing? McEnroe did more underlying damage than anyone I can think of.

Good points. I like the one about "The Great John McEnroe's Serve" in particular. I have always considered Pete Sampras a platform based server as well.

Jerzy sure blasts away at his first...and even his second. He blasts away seemingly thoughtlessly. The only trace of thought is mph. Speed. But McEnroe was the ultimate cerebral server and it certainly didn't hurt being left handed. He automatically ups the ante.

Pin-point serving gives me the impression, rightly or wrongly, as being less stable. More moving parts...making it more difficult to synchronize the toss with the motion. I don't know how many of these stances where the server seems to be tossing the ball out of sight. Slight exaggeration perhaps. But the extra feet shuffling sometimes is a good excuse to throw that thing higher to give the server more time to go through the motion.

Personally I feel that speed may be overrated when it comes to good serving. When watching the Australian Open it became more and more obvious who had the best serve in the world. The big speed servers were on the sidelines and 35 year old Roger Federer mowed down the field. He did it with a lot of cagey serving...while at the same time mixing it up with ample speed and great choice of spin and just as importantly...placement. Another platform server.

Janowicz is the antithesis of Federer when it comes to serving. All of that potential staring him in the face yet he turns a blind eye to it. McEnroe could have taught this kid a thing or two. He may have made a good coach for Jerzy "Joe".

Stats are certainly misleading. It often amazes me how useless they actually are sometimes. The one stat that is the most misleading can be the speed stat. What is power..I ask the student. Control is power...control being the elements of speed, spin and placement. Not necessarily in that order.

[stotty]

Thanks for the acknowledgement...Stotty.

My pleasure....

Jerzy's stats for double faults is certainly poor, and he ought to serve more aces. His first serve percentage is decent, however; higher than Sampras, for example. But this is where stats are misleading. A serve can be far better or worse than its stats in my view. Another way to look at it is how much underlying damage is a serve doing? McEnroe did more underlying damage than anyone I can think of.

[don_budge]

It's interesting Ben Kibler cites Navratilova as having a good push. don_budge has long promoted Navratilova as being a great model for female serving. Few ever picked up on his comments on her serve over the years but he's getting justified here. Everyone reaches for Serena's serve as the model to emulate, understandably, but maybe Navratilova's is better?

Two things about the Navratilova serve. Number one...she is left handed. Up the ante automatically 25%...in the neighborhood or thereof. Number two...she was following it to the net with perhaps one of the most effective serve and volley attacks from the ranks of women ever.

The teaching model is the platform stance...at least in my paradigm. But every tennis player is going to play around with the stance going to and fro with different pinpoints or semi pinpoints. Moving pinpoints. There have been some great serves from all stances. Jerzy Janowicz has one of the worst "bang for the bucks" ever with his service motion. With his size and talent his motion is poorly designed and his second serve is surprisingly suspect as I have seen him double fault many, many times. His variation is very poor and limited to hard or harder. Very little use of spin or variation of spin. Tactics? Does he even know what that means? His grip is suspect.

Thanks for the acknowledgement...Stotty.

[johnyandell]

They are pushing with both feet. It's elevating the back hip--but the front foot is what is raising them off the ground. Look at a bunch of leg action serves in the archives.

[pvchen]

How can you tell from video whether someone is pushing off the back foot or the front foot? When I look at Fed, Sampras, Agassi, it looks like the back toe gets off the ground before the front toe. Does this mean they are pushing off the back foot? Or are they sliding towards the front foot (shifting weight to the front foot) and then jumping off the front foot?

[jdcremin]

Check this out - definitely teaching to use back leg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7aMi_cO44s

[vrc10s]

Look at the Mark Kovacs article this month. Both of the medicine ball drills for the serve are back leg loading drills. I focused several months ago on getting more drive with my back leg along with more shoulder rotation and it has helped my second serve tremendously.

[ralph]

Dr. Mark Kovacs seems to be a strong proponent of the back foot push off along with the back hip moving up. He has a drill in which a player rotates backward getting weight onto the back foot and then picking up a ball which is then thrown to get a feel for the technique. Perhaps both work. Which one is better? Can science prove it?

[bdole]

...And I think Sampras is coming more off the left side than Dr. Kibler is saying, although he certainly pushed with his right leg a lot more than players of the past.

don

Fantastic article. I'm with Stotty in that I don't think the pull is an ineffective method, but will experiment with push to see if I can preserve my already troubled shoulder.
I also don't think Sampras pushed off much w/ the back foot. In this tennisplayer clip, the front knee can be seen to extend while the back foot just tilts and drags.

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members/strokearchive/pro_men/petesampras/ps_serve/ps_1st_serve/ps_1st_serve.html?PS1stSAdCourtLevelRear1.mov

A conversation on the retro/lateral pinpoint serve would not be complete w/o an Edberg clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NMRKL2j_6I

[jdcremin]

I'm 100% undecided on this - are players really pushing off their back foot more than the front? Would really like to see some more analysis.

[stotty]

Jerzy Janowicz can testify there is not too much loss of power using lateral pinpoint. The big plus-point of lateral pinpoint is it allows you to break out of your serve smoothly and continue almost without a break of stride towards the net. Here it is again done perfectly: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4w...se-serve_sport

But for me this isn't the point. It's this business of 'sharing the load', making the serve more efficient and less dependent on the arm and shoulder, that interests me as.

The best way to experience this for yourself is to adopt a platform stance and make sure not to toss the ball too far in front, then load with both legs as Federer does and drive upwards. The rear foot will naturally stay on the deck a little longer than when using lateral pinpoint. The difference is quite amazing once you master it. You get really easy, smooth power, and, yes, access to more spin, especially topspin.

It makes perfect sense, when you think about it, to use the whole body when serving and not to leave a section out. The right leg is a stabiliser in lateral pinpoint where as with 'pushers' it's a power source.

[stroke]

I think John pointed out how much push Roddick got off his back foot(an unusual amount of engagement) in his articles on the Roddick serve. Roddick almost seemed to me to position his right foot in an optimum position for back foot engagement in his pre serve routine. Rick Macci also was really big on this concept on some video piece on the serve that at one time was linked on a thead on tennisplayer.

[gzhpcu]

Gerald Patterson 1919 also had weight on the back foot. 1919, but look how modern his serve looks! Budge (the real one) had weight on front foot.

[gzhpcu]

Interesting article. On the other hand, Pat Dougherty recommends what Stotty is doing...