Your Strokes:
Olivier Lingbeek: Serve

Analyzed by John Yandell

We've taken a break from Your Strokes for a couple of months and looked at a lot of new material, but I've been surprised at the number of emails I've had wondering where it went and requesting we bring it back.

So, by popular demand, we're back in the action this month. This month we'll look at an issue on the serve we haven't addressed in so much detail before, the tossing motion, as seen in the serve of Olivier Lingbeek.

The interesting thing with Olivier is his basic swing mechanics look pretty good. This is different than with almost everyone else we've analyzed. Usually the fundamental issue we see is the racket drop--and this has even included top hundred players such as Paul Goldstein. (Click Here.)

Olivier, on the other hand, apparently has a pretty flexible shoulder because he has a great racket drop position. His real problem is with the toss and his ability to put the ball where he can take advantage of that. His toss is all over the place.

Problem like this with the toss are actually pretty common. They fall into two categories. First, problems with the where the ball is tossed and the impact that has on the contact point. Second, problems with the actual tossing motion itself.

You could have an OK tossing motion and the ability to toss consistently to the same spot, but the wrong idea about where to toss. Or you could have fundamental problems with motion of the hand and arm that prevent you from placing the toss consistently.

Olivier's serve falls into the second category. For this reason, his contact points vary widely, you might even say wildly. Sometimes the ball is in good position, left to right. Other times it is too far to the right to even hit. Other times it is in between--ok to hit but not great in terms of mixing speed and spin.

Remember that we want the toss inside or to the left of the racket hand at contact, so there is an angle in the racket shaft, with the head tilted back slightly toward the left side line. This is to create a natural topspin element in the serve. If this is unfamiliar, it's discussed in a few other articles on the site. In the Sampras Serve series (Click Here.) In the Federer Serve articles (Click Here.)In the Roddick Serve article (Click Here.) And in previous Your Strokes (Click Here.)

Olivier doesn't find that spot too much, so he rightly catches and retosses a lot of balls. But he still ends up hitting some horrible tosses.

Sound like a familiar problem to some of you out there? The solution isn't to catch more tosses. It's to reshape the tossing motion and make it more consistent.

So how should he go about this?

If we look closely at the way Olivier tosses, we can see the likely sources of his problems. First, he is usually very rushed at the start of the motion. His hands start apart, and then go fast right into the motion. There is no moment of pause or gathering at the start of the motion.

So for starters, he needs to take a deep breath, do some ball bounces and find a comfortable, relaxedstarting point.

The rushing affects the shape and rhythm of the tossing motion. Watch how little drop his tossing arm has. His left arm drops at the most a few inches, sometimes barely at all. This tends to make the upward motion fast and jerky. It's also too short. Olivier gets some extension of the tossing arm at the top of the toss, but not enough in most cases.Again there is a lot of variety from ball to ball and that's the opposite of what you want in your tossing motion. The more identical from one to the next the better.

Compare these factors in the motion of Pete Sampras. Pete has probably the longest, smoothest, and most rhythmic service toss of any player I have filmed. He finds that moment of pause we all probably remember so well at the start of his motion, with his foot raised at the start of the motion. That particular position is a personal, idiosyncratic thing and has nothing to do with his motion, but the point is he has ritualized his body position and how he starts the motion so it's the same every time. This is important for making the tossing motion consistent, and also at least as important from the mental point of view.

Now watch how Pete's arm drops down smoothly to the inside of the leg, then starts up slowly and extends beautifully with the arm completely straight at the very top of the motion. The arm points almost directly at the sky, although the angle will be less for players with less knee bend.

Compare that to Olivier. Sometimes he extends very well, other times it's less. Again, the motion is not only short and rushed, it's slightly different everytime. Sometimes he flips the ball up out of his hand and sometimes he seems to lift it more with the whole arm.

Not every player has or needs as much length to the tossing motion as Pete. For comparision, take a look at Roger Federer and also James Blake. Federer starts with his hands lower and drops them less. Blake is somewhere between Pete and Roger. But the point is that the motion of all three players has a significant downward component. This starts the tossing motion slowly and leads to a smooth upward motion and release.

To start to develop this, as mentioned, what I think Olivier needs to do is first change his starting position, especially the position of his hands. He needs to develop a ritual with a pause with his hands together. Maybe something as simple as just putting the ball on the center of the strings with his tossing hand, although there are many variations.

The next step is to drop the arm much further down and then go upwards more slowly and extend. You can see a little flex at the elbow in most players at the time of the release, but I think for the purposes of a model, it's important to focus on keeping the arm straight and using the shoulder muscles to move it up and down.

I would suggest starting by modeling the more extreme version of the tossing more like Pete, by actually letting the tossing hand touch the inside of the leg. He should experimenit and then see what happens. Very likely by starting this way, he will come naturally to a version with somewhat less motion, particularly downward, but still one that is much slower and smoother and longer than what he does now.

We saw in our analysis of all the top servers that the arm is actually pointing more sideways toward the side fence rather than directly forward toward the net during the drop and the extension. (Click Here.) That part Olivier has, although pointing the arm too far forward is a common tossing problem for many other players. Olivier's ball also moves in the correct direction, from his right to his left in an arc toward the contact. It's just that the sudden, short motion makes the path of that arc erratic.

Once he gets more control over the actual tossing motion of the arm, he needs to decide which of his many contact points is going to be the norm. I think it helps to visualize the exact point of the contact, and then visualize the arcing flight of the toss traveling on a precise path to that point.

The animation shows just how far the ball can really move for a player like Pete with a heavy topspin component in his first serve. Olivier needs to experiment to find the right amount of movement for himself. More to the left, as we have found, means more topspin. More to the right, a little flatter and more slice.

The idea though is to have one toss and one contact point. This not only makes things simpler and more consistent, it makes the serve much harder to read, because the toss doesn't telegraph location and spin. From this standardized ball position, the player still has the ability to vary the spins and speed significantly, as all the great servers demonstrate.

With a longer, more disciplined tossing motion, Olivier should be able to do this and put it his toss in the same position on a regular basis. What a relief when you step up to the line! Instead of worrying whether you can hit your toss, you are free to think about what you are going to do with your serve.