Interactive Forum May 2018: Novak Djokovic "New" Serve

[johnyandell]

Novak Djokovic "New" Serve

So here is the latest version of Novak's serve motion, supposedly designed to help his chronic elbow problem. I see less body turn. I see his elbow drop as he moves to the racket drop. I also see his upper arm elbow and go back behind the plane of his body after the trophy position. Compare it the previous version in the High Speed Archives. (Click Here.) Is there a gain or a loss and what if anything will that mean for his elbow? Your thoughts?

[arturohernandez]

The biggest thing I notice is the windup. It seems more abbreviated. His old serve seemed be more Sampras like and much more explosive.

I understand that he might feel his elbow on the serve. But I am not sure I see how the serve caused the elbow problems.

The new serve seems much less explosive to me. With a less circular windup and a shorter backswing there is not much of an accumulation of all the body components to create a heavier serve.

I don't like it but then again it may just be necessary in order for him to play at all.

Are elbow problems associated with serve motions?

[seano]

John - Would still love to hear your stories about Djokovic's serve from back in the day. All great points about less body coil, low elbow in the "trophy position" and the tossing arms path after release of the toss. His lack of internal shoulder rotation is very evident. How about what looks like less loading of the rear leg (result of less coiling?) and subsequent lack of rear leg drive up to the ball? Some people claim that up to 60% of leg drive should come from the rear leg. He's not getting enough hip over hip rotation. At contact, his hips are too open and his right leg has wandered too far right, causing his head to drop slightly, pulling him down. A far cry from Federer, who is still traveling up after contact.

[tennis_chiro]

I think the elbow drop (below the plane of his shoulders/clavicles) is a major problem. It is not there in his earlier service motion. In doing so, he drops the racket head into a position closer to his head before he really drops into the "racket drop" that stretches the shoulder into external rotation to power the snap back into internal rotation. HIs ISR is not that bad. It appears to me that he is getting nearly 170 degrees of rotation of the racket face. But dropping the elbow puts him in a similar situation to the position Oscar Boras was trying to get Rafa out of in the famous video from 2010. The abbreviated backswing brings the racket head into a position that does not lend itself well to stretching the shoulder naturally into full external shoulder rotation and then he has to strain to recreate the easy power he is used to finding there. It would be nice to have a view from the rear fence to see the movement of the racket along the plane of the intended path of the ball.

don

[stotty]

Only one of the serves looks like a serve played in a match, and even that one looks fairly tame. The rest are stroked into play - as in a warm up - so I am not sure how reliably we can measure body turn, etc. when these things only get maxed out when a player is serving to full potential.

The elbow, however, is an interesting observation, and it seems to have morphed back towards his serve around 2008. It's a problem. One of the main reasons Novak managed to break out his world number 3 shackles and surpass Roger and Rafa, was the improvement of his serve.

Interestingly, his stats for his first serve over the last four matches roughly average just under 64%, which is fractionally below his career norm. His last match against Klizan was 79%. So he is not struggling to get first serves in. And he has only served 8 double faults in 10 sets. I haven't studied his speed or placement.

It could be we are all overreacting. It doesn't look too terrible to me, but it's still too early to judge with the rest of his game still out of kilter.

[stotty]

I am watching Novak versus Nishikori at the Madrid Open. Is it me or has Novak's serve started to get less abbreviated?

[johnyandell]

Seano,

Well it's an old story at this point--can't even remember the year but it was when he was working with Todd Martin. Todd changed to an abbreviated motion late in his career and loved it. He tried to get Novak to do the same and it just destroyed his rhythm and racket drop. I saw one match where he hit 7 double faults in one set. I ran into to Todd by chance at Indian Wells. We talked about it. Showed him the horror show of the current attempted motion in high speed. He said they wanted to go back to the old motion. I didn't ever talk directly to Novak, but Todd used the original stroke archive footage of Novak's serve, showed it to Novak, and they used it to recreate something close to his old motion. So it's confirmed. Novak Djokovic has been on Tennisplayer.

[klacr]

Djokovic seems to be gaining confidence each week. Still with an explicable loss but I can see he is now starting to hold himself more accountable, raise his standards of expectations and begin his ascent back to top of the game. When he first came back he said he was just happy to be back and had very little reaction to losses. Now the fire in his belly is growing and he is more competitive.

His serve seems to have improved since the filming of this video. Does not look as bad now as it did. A constant evolution.

Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton

[johncraig]

I don't think Novak's motion is / was the source of his elbow injury. So why not get to the source of the problem and solve it, rather than making adjustments to the motion, which no doubt have weakened the result? I recall when he changed his serve motion earlier in his career...that was a change for the better. Not sure this time was a good choice. Hopefully with his elbow improving we will see his full, natural range of motion again!

[seano]

Just watched a video from 2009 with Novak speaking with a reporter from Time magazine, where he's describing the serve and the importance of the wrist snap (wrist flexion), interesting. He still had his old motion where his arm was too straight and his elbow was too far away in the backswing.