Help from other tennisone members

[Roforot]

In my quest to improve my understanding of the serve, I've been looking at the several of the progallery examples. The problem is that I honestly can't see the difference b/w their first & seccond serve, the serve up the t and the serve wide! I had my wife pick clips up at random and I could not reliably discern the service type based on the player's movement even at slow motion. On Hewitt's serve for example, he turns his wrist out on every serve. His follow through looks the same as well. Does anyone else have this problem? Do you know of any easier ones to look at? FWIW, when I play people at my level, I usually pick up on a closer toss and more arch/bend in the knees and know a topspin serve is coming. What's the old saying? the mind cannot conceive what the eyes cannot see, what the ears cannot hear, nor the fingers touch!

[jun]

It can be pretty confusing.
I think some of them are a little messed up.
Here's a couple of obvious serves.

From John Mac's serve
1.Second Serve Overview
The side view ---> Kick serve.

2.Second Serve Deuce
Front view-court level-wide.--> Kick serve.

3.First Serve Deuce
Front View wide --> Flat serves.

It can be tough to see what serves they are hitting.
The way I did was, I would open up two different serves, and compare the frame by frame. What their racket face, body position is like at the moment of contact and stuff.

As you will notice, for slice wide serves, their shoulders will open up much sooner than flat serve. On thier kick serve, their shoulders will remail closed longer than flat serve.
I can do this for Sampras's serve as well.

I found it pretty difficult for Pat Rafer to tell. It's just the angle and stuff. Andy Roddick isn't so bad to tell. Sampras's is ok. Agassi swings a little different from the other 3 guys I mentioned. But his serve is most obvious.

[Roforot]

Yep, Rafter's serve was really hard to read. Thanks for the info Jun.