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John Daly Serve

Analyzed by John Yandell

When I look at John's serve I can see that he is an experienced competitor. His serve just looks aggressive and he doesn't hold back on the motion. But the question is which motion? John sent me first serves from several angles. Half of them are hit with a radical pinpoint stance, the other half with a platform.

Maybe he did that on purpose to see what I'd say.And what I say is, it's probably not a great idea to have multiple serving stances. So one question is what stance should he adopt? It won't be a big surprise what my answer is, if you've read some of the articles on the serve in the Advanced Tennis section.(Click Here.)

John asked me to look specifically at his serve as it relates to doubles, and I plan to say more about that in Part 2 next month, including some thoughts on his second serve, and the possible pluses minuses of the stances when it comes to getting up to the net faster. We'll address whether than really is a separate issue, and what if anything can really be said about it given what we know about the top players. But first let's just look at the pure technical issues in his motion.

If you've followed these analyzes, you know that first thing I always look for on the serve is the position of the racket drop. The racket should fall along the right side of the body with the tip pointing straight down and the shaft perpendicular to the court. There is a reason we call the model position "the pro racket drop." Virtually all top pros have it, and the rest of us, well, let's just say some of us are closer than others.

John is not that close. He could really improve this position and he would instantly get a lot more action on the ball, both speed and potentially spin. The film he sent in is nicely framed, but the shutter on his camera (or lack thereof) makes it difficult to see the key positions clearly in freeze frame. But it's still obvious that at the lowest point of his racket drop, the shaft of the racket is actually angled across his back and at a diagonal to the court of maybe 45 degrees. That's only half way to perpendicular, which means the tip is pointing straight down.

So that is something really important for him to work on. And you can make real improvement there, as Phil Picuri has shown, with the pictures he's shared in the Forum of his always improving motion.

John's wind up is fairly classical, which I like. But he could experiment with making the motion even more circular, with Mark Philippoussis as an example. He should also try just loosening everything up and just relaxing as much as possible at the top of the backswing. At that point he should just to let the racket fall due to gravity.

As I also suggested to Phil, it also could be in part a question of shoulder flexibility. (Click Here.) Not everyone is Pete Sampras to start with, and as time goes by (speaking from personal experience) the range of movement is tougher to keep. So it's possible that regular stretching and/or massage would increase his ability to achieve the pro racket drop position as well.

The second technical issue to examine is the role of the opposite arm and the tossing motion, and the relation of this issue to the position of the head. John doesn't fully extend his left arm at the end of the tossing motion. He also tends to drop his head as the racket is coming up to the ball, looking forward prior to contact. You can find coaches that don't think dropping the head is a problem, and is actually the right way to go. And it's true that Andy Roddick drops his head, as does Taylor Dent as does Greg Rusedski.

But I'll go with Pete, and Philippoussis and Roger Federer on this one. These guys are all looking upward at the contact point when the ball is struck. The problem is that dropping the head probably has the tendency to pull the racket down and affect the path the swing. It's impossible to see the differences in this video, and difficult to see even in high speed 250 frame video. But I think it's just a better position and probably leads to more consistency and possibly more power. It's definitely worth exploring for John.

There is another related issue here, and that's the ball position on the toss. In the video John sent the ball is quite far to the right at contact. John releases the ball with his arm pointing partially toward the sideline which is good, but I think the ball still travels too much directly upward. As we've seen time and again with the good servers, the toss actually travels on an arc from the player's right to his left.

At contact this positions the ball somewhere between the shoulder and the head. That position creates a topspin component in the serve. You can see whether this is happening by observing if the racket is angled slightly back to the players left at contact, with the ball position inside or to the left of the position of the racket hand.

If you look at John's racket at contact, it appears to be virtually straight up and down. So this means he can only hit completely flat or with slice. What you would like on both the first and second balls is a mix of topspin and slice, and the ability to vary that mix. You want to hit mainly slice with a little top on the first ball, and hit a little less slice and a little more top on the second. But you want to be flexible with those combinations.

This is a key point in doubles. You want some topspin on the first ball to get it up higher in the returner's strike zone. This will produce more high balls on the first volley. And you want to mix your deliveries like a pitcher to keep the opponent's off balance, producing return errors and balls that can be easily poached by your partner.

So I suggest that John experiment with extending and holding that left arm at the top of the tossing motion. This alone will probably pull his ball slightly back to the left. It may also naturally tend to keep his head up longer as well.

Which brings us to the stance, or stances. On some of the serves John uses an extreme pinpoint. This means he not only brings his back foot up, he actually brings it around and to the side, past the right edge of his front foot. When he uses the pinpoint, he also foot faults with both feet. The foot fault is slight and isn't creating a competitive advantage I'm sure, but he should probably take care of before some league opponent decides to make an issue of it.

Committing to some version of a platform stance should also help with the foot faults, but more importantly, it should also improve both his leg drive and his torso rotation pattern. John has some body turn and also a decent knee bend. But our video studies have shown that both the use of the legs and the body rotation are restricted with the rear foot starts to slide, and this is even more true when the rear foot comes so far around and actually to the other side of the front one.

A related point is how the great servers keep their weight more evenly distributed longer than most players. Watch how John's weight shifts forward while Federer keeps his back until deep into the knee bend. The adjustment I would make would be to settle that front foot down. As the arms drop and go up again for the toss, the weight should be about equal between the feet. John picks up his front foot, which is also where the foot fault comes in even with his platform version.

If you look at Federer, it's almost like he is standing straight up and down with his knees a little flexed, while the arms move down and them up. The weight doesn't shift much to the front foot until well after the release of the toss.

I think that if John combines the stance changes with the changes in the tossing motion and ball position, he will feel an increase in ball speed and also the ability to generate more weight in his ball from the topspin component. He should also feel like he working less to do all this. He should be able to mix deliveries better--all that should add effectiveness to his serving in doubles.

The trick is going to be to experiment with the changes one by one. You can't make five or six adjustments at once. My opinion is that he should work in this order. First settle the stance. Now experiment with the longer more circular wind up and trying to improve the racket drop. Then the extension of the tossing arm and the position of the ball left to right.

You have to use your instincts here, and go back and forth among these elements, working on one, shifting to another, going back and forth, gradually mastering them and mastering putting them together. The changes on any one element in particular seem natural or difficult, drop it for the time being and go on to the next one. Now circle back around and try the first one again. Over time this is a positive path to real technical improvement.

So much for technique on the first serve. Next month let's look at John's second serve and say a little more about the stances when comes to getting to the net. Maybe I'll even say some things that qualify (possibly, possibly!) the advantages I see in the platform stance.