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Tyler Zink Serve

John Yandell

Tyler Zink is an elite junior player who, besides his ITF rankings over the years, won the U.S. Open junior doubles in 2019. Except for the obvious reason, he would now be playing high in the lineup at college power the University of Georgia.

I've known Tyler and his sister Lindsay (also headed for D1 tennis) for a few years now. Their dad George Zink has become a good friend and did a great series on winning point patterns for Tennisplayer, with Tyler and Lindsay doing the examples. (Click Here.)

George was a high level player himself and is an experienced, elite coach. In my opinion he has a discerning tennis mind, that rare combination of curiosity and skepticism of much coaching “wisdom" that makes him great to talk tennis with.

New Remote Protocol

Given my respect for George, I was excited when he asked me if I could work with him and Tyler on Tyler's serve. I wasn't going to Florida where the Zinks are, and they weren't coming to California where I am, so we decided to develop a remote protocol.

That involved George filming high speed video of Tyler on his iphone and emailing it to me. Then me putting that side by side on my computer screen with high speed footage a player named Roger Federer. Then, using FaceTime, pointing the camera at my computer screen so they could see the comparison and analyze and discuss and then implement.

I have always been skeptical of “remote" coaching and prefer being on court with players, but I was amazed at how well this protocol worked. So much so in fact that if any subscribers out there want to try it with me (at a reduced rate!) you can email me at jyandell@tennisplayer.net for more info.

So what did I think of Tyler's serve? That it had no technical flaws. But that he could enhance its effectiveness in a couple of ways.

The first thing I always want to check is the path of the racket in the upward swing. This is from the drop position along the right side of the body up to the contact and then out to the forward extension. Tyler obviously had a strong flexible shoulder and his racket path looked perfect.

The racket was on edge at the drop, basically perpendicular to his torso. It then rotated 90 degrees to the contact point. And then rotated another 90 degrees at the extension of the forward swing so the racket was on edge basically perpendicular to the court. So called full pronation.

Those positions indicated that he was getting the most out of the internal rotation of this upper arm in the shoulder joint. Certainly this was a factor in his competitive successes.

But both Tyler and George wondered if he couldn't get more out of his motion. And after looking at the video I thought the answer was yes.

Body Rotation

The first factor was his body rotation. If you looked at Tyler's shoulders at the start of the motion, they were quite open. A line across his shoulders was at about a 45 degree angle to the court.

So when he started the windup, his body turned off the ball but only until it was roughly parallel to the baseline. His shoulder rotation forward to the contact was therefore about 45 degrees or a little more.

We looked at that in comparison to Federer. Certainly there are many great servers on the tour and players can model many elements from them.

But I prefer everything about the Federer model. I think it gets the most out the body turn. And it something I have used successfully in coaching players at all levels from pro to college to club. (Click Here for more on that.)

So the first thing was just to show Roger's starting shoulder position to Tyler and George. Federer starts with his shoulders basically perpendicular to the baseline in an offset platform stance.

As he begins his windup, Federer then turns off the ball so that his shoulders reach an angle of maybe 45 degrees to the baseline with his back partially turned to the net. So that means significantly more rotation to the contact compared to Tyler.

We know that shoulder rotation is a key element in producing racket speed in all the strokes. And the two best servers of their generations, John McEnroe and Pete Sampras had even more massive rotation in the forward swing that Federer.

Pete was probably a three quarter McEnroe and Federer in probably a three quarter Pete. But Mac and Pete are the extremes. Federer's less extreme turn is something most players—and certainly a player at Tyler's level can incorporate.

In addition to producing basically free power, this turn off the ball may also contribute to disguise and make it harder to read serve direction. Pete's opponent's often stated that they simply couldn't anticipate his serve locations with the racket coming from so much further behind.

So to develop this increased rotation, we started Tyler with his shoulders square to the baseline. I also felt his stance was a little wide with the rear foot too far back. So we narrowed it, but also offset his rear foot more to his left, again on the Federer model.

Then we just let Tyler serve and get the feeling of the changes. Almost immediately George noticed a different sound from the ball coming off his racket.

After a few dozen serves his turn from the ball it looked like Tyler had been serving this way all his life. He reported that it seemed to generate more power, yet felt like less effort.

Entry in Backswing

That was awesome, so I decided then to address one other element I had noticed from the start. In working with players part of the art is in knowing where to start and what to address when. And for me in this case, the stance was primary.

Since Tyler incorporated the new stance and body turn so effortlessly I thought we could address another issue having to do with his backswing, something I learned from Dr. Brian Gordon. (Click Here.)

This is the timing of the entry of the racket into the backswing in relation to the timing of the knee bend. Biomechanical research by Brian and others shows that the upward uncoiling of the legs drives the racket and hitting arm back and down, increasing the external rotation of the shoulder and therefore racket speed.

According to this analysis, the effect is maximized when at the maximum knee bend the racket is just about to enter the backswing—or better yet the racket is still slightly to the player's right.

The timing of Tyler's entry into the backswing was slightly early. So we had Tyler model a new position, with the arm and racket slightly to the right of the point of entry. And hit some serves from that position.

Then Tyler started to serve again with the whole motion. It was virtually immediate adoption. He just seemed to have an intuitive feel for the change. Guess that's one reason he has been so successful, in addition of course to his dad's coaching.

The combined effect of these changes was a few more mph on the radar gun. (To see more about the pocket radar gun we used, Click Here.) His ball also appeared heavier in terms of spin.

Most importantly, Tyler reported that the entire motion felt effortless. My belief is when that's true, there is less tendency to try to muscle the serve under pressure. Just let the body load and uncoil all the elements more naturally.

Hopefully competitive tennis will return in our lifetimes. When that happens I will be really interested to hear about the increased effectiveness of Tyler's serve!