Your Strokes:
Jeff Greenwald Serve

Analyzed by John Yandell

Part of being a tennis player is managing your game - technically, tactically, mentally - no matter what your level. I don't believe that there is such a thing as final mastery in this game. You can't lock your forehand away in a safe like a possession you own, and then trot it out at match time. Everyone's strokes are fluid, with tendencies, strengths, and weaknesses that come and go, depending on opponents, practice routines, court surfaces, and mental pressures.

This point may be especially true for lower level players, but it applies all the way up the tennis food chain. So it was a lot of fun to get a chance to work with my friend Jeff Greenwald on his serve. Jeff, as most of our subscribers know, is a Tennisplayer contributor (Click Here). He is also one the world's elite senior players, with the credentials to prove it. Jeff was previously ranked #1 on the planet in the men's 35s. And now he was moving into national 40s competition.

Jeff has a huge forehand, and can still rocket his serve at 120mph. The problem was that the rocket serves weren't finding the service box frequently enough as he was preparing for the national 40s. So he called me to talk it over. Unlike a surprising number of top players, Jeff is brutally honest with himself about all dimensions of his game - and that to me is a sign of confidence. He is willing to examine any aspect of his tennis that he feels could improve and help him reach his potential in world class play.

So when he asked me to take a look at his serve on video, I said sure, as long as I could write about it for Tennisplayer. I felt it was a great opportunity not only for me, but for our subscribers to see how accomplished players approach technical problems.

One of the things we both agreed was that it was crazy to try to take the motion completely apart in the middle of a competitive cycle - and that this was probably unnecessary anyway.

All the strokes in tennis are tremendously complex, with multiple technical elements that can be combined in almost unlimited ways - and the serve of an elite player is no exception.

There are different possible starting stances, toss heights, toss locations, levels of knee bend, body rotation, swing paths, different contact points, body postures, leg actions, landing positions--and that probably doesn't cover it all.

The challenge for Jeff was to identify a limited number of elements to test, and possibly adjust. To me this is one of the most difficult aspects in coaching, but also the greatest creative opportunity.

Faced with a similar situation, too many coaches, in my opinion, take it the opportunity to pontificate and try share their entire knowledge base, rather than looking closely at what the player needs. There is a real danger of making it more about yourself than the player.

So the main point was to listen to Jeff. He reported than when his arm was loose in practice - no problem--he could bomb the ball in. But as the pressure increased in match play, his serve progressively deserted him. Interestingly, he noted, most of the faults were finding the net.

Having watched Jeff for a number of years, I felt that he had actually put his finger on the exact issue - his serve was coming a little too much from his arm. He had a limited body turn and also less knee bend compared to other players at his level.

So we filmed him at Harbor Point in Marin county California, the small, gorgeous club by the bay where we both belong. And when we watched his motion together on video, we both agreed that this analysis was on the money.

In general my feeling about the serve is that the more you can use your legs and the rotation of your torso, the more natural and automatic the delivery. Under pressure it becomes more a matter of coiling and exploding, and less a matter of manipulating the racket head with your hand at the last split second.

The other thing we noticed in the video was that Jeff's relative lack of leg action was also affecting his balance. He wasn't really exploding upward into the ball, and was somewhat tilted forward at the waist at contact. He then landed slightly off balance with that same bend or greater at the waist.

So Jeff and I agreed the goal should be to get more body into the motion. But the question was how? The issue was complicated by Jeff's extreme pinpoint stance. His feet were spread about one and a half times shoulder width. As his motion began, he slid his rear, right foot upward and actually around and to the right of his left.

This motion is generally associated with less turn away from the ball, and frequently, with less knee bend as well. It also tends to be an entrenched habit for players who use it. Was it realistic to think he could make a radical change in his stance prior to one of the most important tournaments of the year?

What I suggested instead was that Jeff make a slight adjustment in his starting stance at the beginning of the motion. Jeff had always started his serve with his front foot quite open, pointing more forward toward the net that most top servers.

Players with the great body turns and deepest knee bends, Federer or Pete Sampras for example, started with the front foot virtually parallel to the baseline in the add court and opened only slightly in the deuce. So Jeff decided to try this.

The other adjustment we decided on was to narrow the stance slightly, bringing the back up closer and slightly more behind the baseline, something closer to shoulder width.

I've found this particular alignment tends to facilitate natural body turn. I also felt it was possible that it would naturally moderate Jeff's extreme pinpoint motion. My thought was that from this stance he might not slide the rear foot so far around, and might instead bring it more directly upward so that it was in line with the front foot instead of crossing over to the right side.

I considered these suggestions experimental. Rather than outlining some absolute theory of serving mechanics, I wanted to see what effect if any the experiment had, and then base the next move on those results.

And that's the great thing about experiments. Sometimes the results are surprising and very different from what you anticipate. From his new stance, Jeff hit one serve and we both heard the ball explode off the racket. We looked at each other and both laughed. We knew we were on the right track. Then Jeff asked if the adjustment in the starting stance had affected his pinpoint and if he had dragged his rear foot less.

I answered no. Because the fact was he didn't drag it less, he didn't drag it at all. With this simple change in his starting alignment, he had hit a perfect serve from compact platform stance. That amazed me.

And he kept doing it. Jeff asked me if I thought he should keep the platform or consciously recreate his old pinpoint stance. My answer was that I thought his body was telling him something and that he should stick with that message.

There were two other related points to address: the amount of knee bend and the landing. The great thing about the platform stance is that it allows you to simply let your weight drop down in both legs, without having to coordinate this with the sliding of the back foot. So Jeff tried this from his newly created platform stance and instantly felt the deeper bend further increase the explosiveness of his ball.

But what about his balance on the landing? He was still somewhat bent over at the waist. So I asked him to try something I've used with other advanced servers, as well as players at all levels. This was to increase the kick back with the back leg, so that the sole of his shoe pointed back toward the back fence.

I asked him to combine this with a little exercise I call the "hoppity hop." After the kick back, Jeff had to land on balance on the left front foot and then maintain this position by taking an extra hop or two.

The reason this works is simple. There is no way to do the hoppity hop if you are bent over too much at the waist, or if you let the back leg come around too soon.

The result was amazing. When we filmed Jeff from the side again, his posture was radically improved. He was more upright at contact, and far more balanced on his landing. Bottom line, he was now much closer to the Federer model.

All this change had taken place in less than an hour, counting the time we spent in the Harbor Point clubhouse looking at the video. Jeff and I agreed that the three key points were the change in the starting stance, dropping the weight down further with the knees, and then staying upright and kicking the leg straight back with a balance landing.

Not only was the sound of the ball coming off his racket more explosive, Jeff reported that he felt that the whole motion took much less effort, with less reliance on the hitting arm action. Best of all the serve was finding the box a high percentage of the time, and almost never finding the net. Mission accomplished for one day.

But stay tuned for the report on the 40's nationals. We'll see how well Jeff was able to apply the changes, what he learned, and how effective it was in a high level and fiercely contested national tournament.