Lag on the serve and take back

[mac-1210]

I'm pretty happy with my service motion from trophy position to finish but am never quite satisfied with the take-back and end up playing around with this element of the serve quite a lot. Looking at the pro's, there is a huge variety of take back and I realise a lot of this is style rather than technique (although there will be a timing effect). I see the majority of players these days accelerate through the takeback and consequently the trophy position is moved through very quickly. Then one or two players actually pause in the trophy position.

Some also have quite extreme lag and have tossed the ball prior to the racket having come up at all and on the other extreme other players are "up together" with racket and tossing arms.

Some examples of pausing at trophy...Boris Becker, Cameron Norrie (he lags but seems to stop dead like a statue at trophy).

Example of total lag...Taylor Fritz. Example of no lag...Stan Wawrinka. Inbetween...Federer, Sampras.

For the recreational player with a fairly technically proficient serve, what is best to copy and is there any element you should be avoiding and leaving to the professionals? Is there someone you'd simply say "just try and copy that"?

 

[dkmura]

Timing and technique on the serve is a very personal thing. You need to see what works best for you. Trying to copy pros only goes so far- they might be an inspiration, but only if your body type and timing are similar to theirs.

 

[Dakota C]

'Proficient' seems broad to me .

If you're already proficient, I think it makes sense to just play around with different pieces like you mentioned and see if anything seems to improve for you.

I personally like the fluid service motion as something to aim for as I think it really helps simplify the service motion (currently adding this to my serve to see if I can improve any aspects)

 

[Fintft]

Aren't lower level players supposed to start slow (the take back that is and the toss) and then increase the speed as the serve motion progresses?

 

[ballmachineguy]

Whatever creates the greatest racquet head speed is best. As far as parole telling you what works best for your body type, I imagine you have two arms and two legs like other tennis players. You have the same “body type.”
In the future you will see no one pausing at the “trophy position.” If you have trouble serving by rolling through the trophy to keep the racquet moving, you are doing something incorrectly. Go for broke and learn to hit the biggest serve possible. You’ll regret it, if you don’t.

 

[Chas Tennis]

I'm pretty happy with my service motion from trophy position to finish but am never quite satisfied with the take-back and end up playing around with this element of the serve quite a lot. Looking at the pro's, there is a huge variety of take back and I realise a lot of this is style rather than technique (although there will be a timing effect). I see the majority of players these days accelerate through the takeback and consequently the trophy position is moved through very quickly. Then one or two players actually pause in the trophy position.

Some also have quite extreme lag and have tossed the ball prior to the racket having come up at all and on the other extreme other players are "up together" with racket and tossing arms.

Some examples of pausing at trophy...Boris Becker, Cameron Norrie (he lags but seems to stop dead like a statue at trophy).

Example of total lag...Taylor Fritz. Example of no lag...Stan Wawrinka. Inbetween...Federer, Sampras.

For the recreational player with a fairly technically proficient serve, what is best to copy and is there any element you should be avoiding and leaving to the professionals? Is there someone you'd simply say "just try and copy that"?

Pausing at Trophy Position is closely related to toss height. When you observe the serve for pausing make certain that you are looking at the toss release height, and can see the peak of the ball's trajectory. Of course, some servers impact the ball at peak of toss or maybe even as the ball is still rising.

I posted on that toss & time some years ago when I first noticed stop and wait (stop and wait Sharapova, pause Wawrinka, no pause and fast motion Andy Roddick, no pause and very low toss, fast, Roscoe Tanner & Sam Groth. The time from toss release until impact is reproducible related simply to the toss height, peak ball height and velocity at release.

The part of the ball's trajectory above toss release and impact is a body in free fall. That release-to-impact part of the trajectory will have similar timing for a given release velocity.

There are simple calculations for the time it takes the ball to rise to peak and then fall to the height of impact. An object rising then falling in earth's gravity was studied in the 1600s by Isaac Newton. You only need the ball's upward velocity at release. You could also have someone time you with a stop watch. Roscoe Tanner said that with his very low toss he had to have high acceleration, high speed and keep moving. He claimed that when he first practiced the serve he was swinging fast at leaves on trees. It is difficult to find high speed videos of Tanner's serves, there is one in a long Vic Braden video.

A number of very strong servers have very low tosses. Besides Tanner, Groth, there's Ivanisevic and others.

 

[TennisCJC]

Mikal Youzhny (see video) has one of the biggest "lags". His racket tip is pointing down while his toss arm is at full extension upwards and then he starts the swing from this low position. I experimented with this and it worked reasonably well but that was years ago. Now, I am down together, up together with a small delay around trophy. My goal on toss is to let the ball drop about the width of 2 or 3 tennis balls before I hit so I have a low toss as the ball drops less than 1 foot. My only suggestion is to avoid a high toss as I think that makes timing, rhythm and toss consistency difficult. A low toss is also great on a windy day. Vic Braden taught that the racket arm should be roughly parallel to the ground when the legs fire and he also taught a very low toss with impact at the peak of the toss. He did high speed video analysis and proved that you can go from the hitting arm parallel to the ground to ball impact and the ball will drop only 1 inch or less. I am guesstimating her but if you were starting from Youzhny's super low start with racket head pointing down, you could still reach impact before the ball drops 6 inches at most but that's a SWAG. I think either approach is fine but as I said, I would avoid a toss that let's the ball drop over a foot.