Tour Strokes:
Justine Henin Serve
By John Yandell
It's an unknown story. In 2002 Justine Henin made a major technical change to her serve that was integral in winning 7 Grand Slam titles over the next 6 years. Here for the first time is the untold story of what she changed and how.
When I first filmed Justine at Indian Wells in 2002, there was a giant buzz around her and especially that gorgeous backhand. But she was plagued by inconsistency on her serve, and that was affecting her confidence. In one match I filmed, she hit 12 double faults.
After looking at the footage, I believed that her extreme pinpoint stance was the reason for her inconsistency. I also thought it was reducing her velocity and ability to generate spin.
The Original Stance
As that 2002 film showed, Justine started her serve with her feet quite close together. As the windup began, she then dragged her back foot up and around her front foot so the toes of both feet were nearly touching the baseline.
This foot forward stance restricted her ability to turn her shoulders away from the ball in the wind up and to rotate them around and forward in the swing to the ball. It also limited her ability to bend her knees and to push off with the back leg.
In a new series beginning in this issue of Tennisplayer, Dr. Ben Kibler distinguishes between two types of serving motions with different stances and resulting use of the torso and the legs—the "pull" and the "push." (Click Here.)
He concludes that pushing correctly with the back leg is superior from a technical point of view as well as from the perspective of injury perspective. And that the stance is also key in facilitating body turn.
And I agree with Ben. His work reinforces conclusions I had reached based on many years of high speed filming and analysis. These exact problems stemming from stance are what I saw all those years ago with Justine.
Actual Change
Now it's one thing to identify an alleged problem with the technique of a world class player. It's a far different thing to try to help change it.
My experience in talking to tour coaches is that they become defensive at the idea of looking at stroke video that might reveal some technical issue they weren't aware of. That kind of information from an outside source threatens their relationship with the player and their authority as an expert.
That wasn't the attitude of Carlos Rodriquez, Justine's mentor and coach. He was receptive and eager—in fact I think he already was thinking along the same lines.
After talking to him, I gave him some of the very first high speed video ever recorded of professional players—specifically of Pete Sampras's serve. That had to give the theory credibility when he showed it to Justine.
Sampras, Ben Kibler concludes, was one of the great "push" servers ever—with the resulting highest spin measurements in tennis history. (Click Here for the first ever pro tennis spin data collected from the U.S. Open in 1997.) We've spent a lot of time on Tennisplayer over the years looking at Pete's amazing motion and how his legs and shoulders work together to produce that phenomenal delivery. (Click Here.)
The first key is Pete's starting stance, with his legs off set and his back foot turned slightly away from the baseline. As he winds up, his hips and shoulders naturally turn onto the line of the stance.
From there, he gets massive forward shoulder rotation into the shot. The turn away from the court also makes his serve difficult or impossible to read.
Unlike many players who start in wide stances, Pete keeps his back foot position as he turns and coils his legs. The turn and the knee bend are maximized at the same moment, creating tremendous explosive potential.
The Rear Foot Push
This rear foot position is, according to Ben's study, a key to the motion. It allows players to turn, but also to push off the court with great force as the motion uncoils.
This powerful push with the back foot elevates the body--and especially the rear hip--more rapidly and higher than other stances. This generates energy that passes up the biomechanical chain and eventually into the ball.
These elements help account for the effortless, explosive quality of Pete's serve. You see the same thing with Roger Federer, another great server with an effortless motion that starts with a platform stance—one only slightly less extreme than Pete's.
As we will see in future installments in Ben's series, serving from this stance requires great leg strength and that fact may help explain why it is uncommon in women's tennis even at the highest levels.
I know from my own experience working with female players that making the change to a platform stance isn't always successful. At the invitation of her coach, I tried that once with an elite women's college player.
After two days I thought she had changed successfully from an extreme pinpoint to a platform stance and was hitting a heavier, more effortless ball. Later that year when I checked out one her team's matches, I was surprised to see that she had reverted to her original motion.
The Transformation
But that didn't turn out to be the case with Justine. She owned the change. Ever wonder why a 5' 7" woman was able to serve so effectively at the world class level?
Definitely it was in large part Justine's natural ability. But it was also her willingness to adopt a predominantly male technical model and make it her own.
Using the Sampras video, Carlos was able to help her transform her suspect motion into a weapon that contributed to her amazing results. (Carlos and Justine did something similar with her forehand Click Here.)
A few years later I had the opportunity to film Justine in high speed video and see exactly how she had synthesized the technical components of the platform stance into her motion. It was the most impressive technical transformation I had ever seen at the world class level.
Justine's starting stance was much wider than before, with the feet offset like Pete, though without the slightly open angle of the back foot. Still, like Pete, this off set stance led to a huge body turn in the windup.
Her shoulders now turned onto a line parallel to a line across her toes. She was turning much further than with her old stance—not as far as Pete--but probably as much as Roger Federer—and certainly further than any other player on the women's tour.
Like Pete, she reached this maximum turn at the same moment she reached maximum knee bend. The combination created the same great body coil as Sampras.
From this position her legs exploded upward and her torso simultaneously rotated into the forward swing—far more in both cases than with her previous stance. You can feel it just watching the video.
Like Pete her back foot pushed off powerfully adding energy to the overall motion. Watch it as it comes off the court.
Justine Henin's serve technique was ahead of its time. And still is. The research is just now starting to catch up with what she and Carlos achieved. Possibly, the next jump in the world of women's tennis is the one they made 15 years ago.
My experience is that some version of a platform stance will usually work for players at other levels as well. I've seen it work with elite senior players like Tennisplayer writer Jeff Greenwald. (Click Here.) and Tennisplayer subscribers who are avid recreational players. (Click Here.) And even with girls on my high school teams in San Francisco.
Question? Have you videoed your own serving stance? Or maybe you need to come to San Francisco and have me do it for/with you? (Click Here.)
