Your Strokes:
Paul Goldstein: Serve Part 2

Analyzed by John Yandell

In the previous Your Strokes article, we looked at Paul Goldstein's wind up, racket drop and body turn. (Click Here). We saw how using an "overcompensation" to lengthen and expand his wind up led to an increase in his racket drop, and also paved the way for an increased body turn, and better weight distribution in the knee bend.

One of the fascinating things about working with a tour player is the opportunity to see him actually implement significant changes right there on center court with the TV cameras rolling. That takes commitment and a significant amount of courage.

Having worked with a lot of players at a lot of different levels, it never ceases to amaze me how elite players will seize on a change and absolutely own it--once they are convinced it's in their interest. It's inspirational. Sure there is an incentive--anything that yields a small improvement on the tour could be the difference in winning a close match, or moving up a few precious spots on the computer. A few more free points on the first serve: a little more speed and a little more weight on the second serve pro matches can be decided by literally a total of one or two total points. The difference between a few more wins and a few more losses--and a ranking of 30 instead of 150--is pretty much razor thin.

So no doubt there is a big upside. But there is an equal amount of risk. Think about it--you've got John McEnroe on the other side of the net, and you have to step up and hit a serve with a motion that you tweaked two weeks ago. Or you're facing Lleyton Hewitt or Andre Agassi and you have a big second serve to hit with break point against you. How cool do you have to keep it to actually pull the trigger on something like that?

On the flip side at lower levels, it's equally amazing to me to watch a high school player or a 4.0 men's club player hang on to some horrifying technical element in a particular stroke with a mental death grip. Through side by side video analysis, the player introduces a powerful new technical element into a given stroke.

Often the result is an absolute quantum improvement--at least in the safety of the coaching environment. But in the end the player doesn't have the courage or the persistence to implement it on a permanent basis and goes back to his old ways in match play. I see that I lot more than I wish I did.

You might think it'd be the other way around--that lower level players would be more receptive to technical changes and would make them more easily. How much do you really have at stake in that Wednesday afternoon showdown with Bob at the club? But that's not the reality. Apparently the ability to sense what these differences really mean and to seize the opportunities they offer is one of the things that makes a world class player world class.

And that's why it was so cool to see some of this process first hand with Paul, watching him play both in San Jose and in Las Vegas a couple of weeks later. With the radar guns and match statistics it is possible to see concrete differences in pro matches. But it's also something you can just feel when you watch.

In the first article, we looked at how the change in Paul's wind up seemed to lead naturally to a much better body turn and how his motion just naturally shifted toward the Sampras model. But one other aspect in this process we had to address was the question of ball placement on the toss, and the position of the contact point on the left to right axis.

The difference in the contact points on the second serve, before and after.

With Paul's old motion, his toss was fairly far to the right, making it difficult to create much of a topspin component. If you look at his racket at the contact, it's close to straight up and down. As we've seen the angle of the racket is tilted more to the left for players like Sampras or Federer, indicating they are hitting up on the ball.

With the contact more to the right, it's usually possible to hit the ball slightly harder and flatter, primarily with sidespin. But that contact point makes it harder to generate the weight and the higher bounce associated with a heavier serve. The margin of error is less as well, with less clearance over the net and less topspin to drop the ball into the box.

With the change in his wind up and the body turn, Paul found that it was natural to experiment with bringing the ball further to his left. Usually there is a trade off when you move the ball left. You trade speed for topspin. But with his improved racket drop, Paul could actually have it both ways. Because the path of the racket was better, he could create more ball speed than with his old motion, especially on the second ball. At the same time, he could afford to generate a little more topspin on both his first and second deliveries. You can see the difference in the ball position and the angle of racket at the contact point.

And the result was? It'd be hard to say that the serve alone was responsible for Paul's recent results, because that's not the way it really works. But I think it is fair to say it was an important factor. You could see that in the numbers on the radar gun. In San Jose he made multiple first serves that topped 120mph on the radar gun. But the change on the second serve was probably more significant. In the past the speed could drop into the 70mph range or even lower. But in San Jose it stayed consistently in the mid to high eighties, with some balls over 90mph.

Paul lost to Lleyton Hewitt in San Jose in straight sets, but with fellow ex-Stanford star Jim Thomas he went all the way to the doubles final before losing a third set super tiebreaker to John McEnroe and Jonas Bjorkman. In Las Vegas he had two wins over fellow Americans Robby Ginepri and Vince Spadea. Then he took out Xavier Malisse before losing again to Hewitt, this time in 3 sets. That's a pretty impressive outing, don't you think?

In Indian Wells, he beat a tough Spainard, Alberto Martin, then lost to Andre Agassi in 3 sets, a match Paul actually felt he should have won. On to Miami where he beat Justin Gimelstob and had 2 match points on David Nalbandian before losing in three. After Miami, his ranking was at an all time high at 58 on the computer.

The interesting thing was that through all this, Paul was never satisfied with the serve, and has continued working on it, both with his tour coach Scott McCain and myself. It was kind of scary because one day when all three of us were on the court filming, Scott said something like. "Now it would be great if you could add more balance." I'd been looking through the camera lens and thinking that exact same thought at virtually the exact moment and wondering whether it was the right time to suggest experimenting with something more. Then Scott spoke up.

One of the most important things about trying to help players is knowing when to keep your mouth shut. Sometimes there is a temptation to try to show off everything you know or see. But players can always tell when you are doing this, and it can sabotage the whole process. An important part of coaching is knowing what to say when and what issues to address in what sequence.

I think Scott must have been pretty certain the timing was right. But really the only person that could make that call was Paul. He could have just ignored us, but he was receptive to the idea, so he must have felt pretty comfortable with what we had already accomplished. So just like that we started to address the issue of how Paul landed and how he recovered for the next shot.

Once again, the work we did parallels the analysis we are also doing of Federer's serve. (Click Here.) I had noticed since day one that Paul landed leaning over quite far with his torso, and that he had a really aggressive kick back with the rear leg. Although his left foot landed just inside the baseline, his balance and his leg kick propelled him 2 or 3 feet further before he could recover to a ready position. Watch in the animation and then compare it to Federer in the article on his serve.

There are two keys to improving the balance on the landing. The first is to focus on standing straight up and down from the waist. The goal is to land with the torso of the body more perpendicular to the court. A good test is if the player can stop with the left foot landing and doesn't need to take a cross step forward with the right foot to keep from tumbling over.

To feel this I ask players to catch themselves and stay on balance when they land. If they need to take an extra step, they should hop forward on the left front foot. This really helps them feel what it's like to stay upright and balanced. The second key is to visualize the back leg as "quieter" and more relaxed, with the lower leg coming up no higher than parallel to the court. If it comes up too far too fast, it's impossible to stay on the left foot, because the kick back with cause the player to lean over too much.

Paul adopted both these keys. In Vegas he called me up and we went out to the court a couple of times between his matches and hit baskets. You can see from the filming how much better his balance is. The other thing about a more precise controlled landing is that it helps create a consistent contact point. The toss has to be exactly in the right place, because the player trys to avoid lurching forward at the waist to adjust to the ball.

In his Vegas matches it was interesting to see Paul work on incorporating it. Some of his landings were much the same as before. Others were much more upright and controlled. If he decides to stay with the concept, going forward over time, I have no doubt that he'll own the landing the way he did the other changes.

It's probably not the last chapter, but the experience so far is a great example of how the coaching process works when it is successful. The first point is that knowledge does not equal change. This is a common confusion among the majority of players who take lessons. They believe that just "understanding" what they need to do is the key to improving.

Here's an extreme example of the wrong attitude. I had a corporate executive type who came for a video analysis. We spent most of an hour working on his forehand, and got through an improved framework. With 10 minutes left, I asked him to do a crosscourt drill with his new stroke. No, he said, he wanted me to teach him the backhand in the last 10 minutes.

I told him that we should address that in the future, but it would be counter-productive to try to start a new stroke in 10 minutes. I told him it would be better to try to consolidate some of his forehand work in a drill with a higher degree of difficulty. He told me that he "completely understood" the forehand and insisted that I start explaining the backhand to him since that was what he was "paying me for." I guess the guy just wasn't used to hearing no. When I told him we'd both be wasting our time he got quite belligerent. So I told the best thing would just be if he paid me for the 50 minutes and left. I never heard from him again, and honestly that was the outcome I was trying to create.

Contrast that with a player at Paul's level who actually is trying to make a stroke work on the pro tour. The players who really benefit from the input they receive are the ones who work through the process inch by inch on a daily basis. It's obvious to me that Paul is going to continue to improve his serve. I also think that sometime this year he's going to take down one or more of those top players who have barely escaped him--so far.