Can you serve 100MPH if your 6 foot and under??

Nostradamus

Bionic Poster
Yes. I am exactly 6 feet tall, but I can serve up to 111 mph. My average is 92 mph and I serve at 67% first serves in.

This guy should have turned pro. i think he was good enough to be top 500 player in the tour. Even Mcenroe couldn't serve this big
 

MaxTennis

Professional
Wow i'm 5'7 currently & I still have 4 or so more years of growing so hopefully I can get taller to be able to hit more consistent aces. (I don't hit very many)

Nice! Yeah you’ve got some time to grow. It definitely helps with flat serves to be taller.

One of my friends is probably 5 ft 4 or 5 ft 5 and he serves better than I do. If he was my height, his serve would be insane.
 

denoted

Semi-Pro
My opinion is that high-level rec players who hit 2/3s of their first serves in at an average speed of >=100 are very rare. There are definitely a good number who can hit over 100, just not with that consistency.
 

Nostradamus

Bionic Poster
I'm around 5'7-8" and I used to hit ~110 in HS.

A few ex-college guys I hit with have told me that my best first serves are in the neighborhood of ~100mph. And now I'm 40.

So yeah, it can be done.
5 foot 8 and 110 mph, that's exceptional. it wasn't kph ,,, right ? anyway, what % of 1st serves did you get in on usual day of match ?
 

ChaelAZ

G.O.A.T.
5 foot 8 and 110 mph, that's exceptional. it wasn't kph ,,, right ?

Funny note. I always have a radar gun in my bag (haven't used it for over a year though) and I was with the high school kids or juniors I would swtich it to kph to watch them light up. Many top Juniors are in the 90's range, but quite a few get up around 100 average. I was just looking at a few of my last matches and doing frame counts I still hit in the 90's average for first serves. Think I only saw a few pushing 100, give or take probably =/-5mph for the frame stutter.
 

Rosstour

G.O.A.T.
5 foot 8 and 110 mph, that's exceptional. it wasn't kph ,,, right ? anyway, what % of 1st serves did you get in on usual day of match ?

It was very streaky. I'd have to be "feeling it" or no dice.

And no, not kph lol. I have a very fluid, relaxed motion even though I really don't use much leg drive. So when I am feeling explosive enough to speed that motion up, serve velocity goes up very easily.

I think I also have good shoulder rotation. Pretty broad shoulders for a guy my size and I can also throw balls really hard and far. Genetics play a huge part IMO.
 

LeeD

Bionic Poster
6 out of 10, in real match play, is excellent for big, strong 5.0's, impossible for 3.5's.
Somewhere in between are 4-4.5's.
Unfortunately, just getting the serve IN does not do the job. Getting good disguise, unpredictability, doing it facing sun, wind, background, and hitting closer than 6" of the lines takes a bit off the real effe tiveness.
 

LeeD

Bionic Poster
Contact point, affected by technique, grip, leg strength, and arm reach.
6' dude with like wingspan reaches 7'7" over his head.
My ex AAU swim-now contractor, 6'1" in this case, easily reaches 8'4" standing flat footed, with work boots on. Swimmers, especially fly and free, have exceptionally long arms and wide shoulders.
How are you built?
 

Devil_dog

Hall of Fame
Diego Schwartzman, 5ft.-7in., has entered the thread. Stats are from tennis abstract dot com. I serve around 85-90 on my best days, according to a buddy who has uncanny ability to measure speeds vs. a radar gun.

2rEihXR.jpg
 

LeeD

Bionic Poster
I would place Johan Kriek as the most likely short player to average over 100, and get 60% IN during match play.
He was around 5'9" at best, and clocked into the 135 mph range quite often. He DID spin lots of first serves at 115 mph.
 

norcal

Legend
How tall was POMO guy? He could serve 120's no problem. 110 mph FH too. Claimed he could take a game or two against Joker or Fed.

However he still lost to TTW legend dgold.

On the bright side, little old ladies at the club feared for their lives while playing against POMO. So his 100 mph+ serves were good for something.
 

JackSockIsTheBest

Professional
How tall was POMO guy? He could serve 120's no problem. 110 mph FH too. Claimed he could take a game or two against Joker or Fed.

However he still lost to TTW legend dgold.

On the bright side, little old ladies at the club feared for their lives while playing against POMO. So his 100 mph+ serves were good for something.
:-D (y)
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
5'10.5" tall. Could do it 20+ yrs ago when I was still in my 40s. Didn't actually hit a high % of fast flat serves cuz my dramatic lefty spins did a good job of driving most returners crazy (esp those below 5.0 NTRP).

1st serve speed dropped off by early/mid 50s. Limited ESR cuz of vball injuries around 40 yrs old... switched to hitting vball right-handed but still played tennis lefty. The ESR limitation caught up to me for my tennis serves in my 50s.
 
D

Deleted member 771407

Guest
J.J. Wolf can serve over120 mph and he is just 6' (but probably a bit smaller and "rounding up :D)
 

sureshs

Bionic Poster
Diego Schwartzman, 5ft.-7in., has entered the thread. Stats are from tennis abstract dot com. I serve around 85-90 on my best days, according to a buddy who has uncanny ability to measure speeds vs. a radar gun.

2rEihXR.jpg

Diego can barely pass 100 and posters here are hitting 100 with a high percentage? Something does not add up.
 

zaph

Professional
Are these speeds measured on a probably configured measuring device, estimates or guess work based off frame-rates?

Sorry to be a skeptic but I have played against someone who could hit 125mph, measured on an LTA speed gun and lots of players who claimed to be able to hit treble figure serves.

All I can say is when I played the 125 guy, if he hit the corners, the serve was past me before I could even react. Even if I got a racket on it, I could feel the power jarring my arm, it had a lot of weight on the serve.

The other guys who supposedly had 100 mph plus serves, some claiming teens or even in the 120 range? I could pretty much return everyone of their serves, unless they caught the lines and even then I could often get a racket on it. There is no way they were anywhere near as big as the 125 guys serve.

Besides getting obsessed with service speed is a bit pointless for rec players, the most effective serves are not always the fastest. Reliability, variety, accuracy and disguise are as important, if not more important than speed.
 
D

Deleted member 771407

Guest
Well th
Are these speeds measured on a probably configured measuring device, estimates or guess work based off frame-rates?

Sorry to be a skeptic but I have played against someone who could hit 125mph, measured on an LTA speed gun and lots of players who claimed to be able to hit treble figure serves.

All I can say is when I played the 125 guy, if he hit the corners, the serve was past me before I could even react. Even if I got a racket on it, I could feel the power jarring my arm, it had a lot of weight on the serve.

The other guys who supposedly had 100 mph plus serves, some claiming teens or even in the 120 range? I could pretty much return everyone of their serves, unless they caught the lines and even then I could often get a racket on it. There is no way they were anywhere near as big as the 125 guys serve.

Besides getting obsessed with service speed is a bit pointless for rec players, the most effective serves are not always the fastest. Reliability, variety, accuracy and disguise are as important, if not more important than speed.

Well there is a huge difference between a 125 mph serve and a 100 mph serve... So nothing surprising. But yeah, most "strong" amateur serves are closer to 90 mph i'd guess
 

LeeD

Bionic Poster
Sampras had ape length arms that hung past mid thigh.
Eddy Dibbs at 5'8" was timed many times during match play at 125+.
But I'm pretty sure Kriek was the biggest serving short guy in ATP.
 

ChaelAZ

G.O.A.T.
...getting obsessed with service speed is a bit pointless for rec players, the most effective serves are not always the fastest. Reliability, variety, accuracy and disguise are as important, if not more important than speed.

My favorite serve is hitting that outside corner with a touch of slice or kick at around 90mph +/- 5mph. That is hard work for most folks to return.

As for the unicorn of 100mph, I regularly play guys from high 3.5 to 4.0+ that serve 95 average and upwards to 110. The doubters always ask and people post match videos in the past, and then everyone does those frame calculations and it usually averages out to somewhere around those ranges. From my match play experience it is more common than not, and not really too magical. I see bigger serves more in singles though, so was just thinkig about that as an interesting factor and why that might be. Anoth interesting thing that I noticed is, that 100mph seems to be a level, and maybe based on standard mechanics and exquipment. To get over 100mph just seems exponentially harder to make happen than going from 90 to 100 mph. That might just be anecdotal though.
 

SystemicAnomaly

Bionic Poster
Diego can barely pass 100 and posters here are hitting 100 with a high percentage? Something does not add up.
The serve speed stats I've seen for Diego has his 1st serve average for various events ranging from 98 to 106 mph. This would certainly suggest that his fastest serves were above these average serve speeds.

I've come across plenty male collegiate, 5.0+ players and top juniors who could serve in excess of 100 mph. Even some HS and sub-5.0 players are hitting their top (not avg) service speeds above 100.

This does not necessarily mean that these players are hitting all or most of their first serves far in excess of 100 mph. Perhaps many can get their faster serves in about 60% of the time. But this does not mean that they are hitting a high % of their 1st serves close to their top speed.

I recall that TennisSpeed.com published some serve speeds for collegiate and competitive junior players back in 2007. Doesn't look like the site is up any longer but a bit of it is archived on the WayBack Machine. Also managed to dig up this link:


Recently, a National Open Junior event was held in Denver for the Boys 18s division, and I used that opportunity to measure the serve speeds (first and second) of the participants there...

I measured the serve speeds of 34 of the 64 participants during live matchplay, and the results I found were interesting to say the least.

The fastest first serve was 118 MPH and the fastest second serve was 94 MPH...


30% of the total number of first serves measured (200+) exceeded 100 MPH.

70% of the players hit a first serve over 100 MPH.

15% of the players hit a first serve over 110 MPH. hit a first serve over 110 MPH.
 
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LeeD

Bionic Poster
I love it when you need to post a picture, but have never sat down and talked to Sampras.
Pete and Colin Dibley had the longest arms for their height.
 

zaph

Professional
My favorite serve is hitting that outside corner with a touch of slice or kick at around 90mph +/- 5mph. That is hard work for most folks to return.

As for the unicorn of 100mph, I regularly play guys from high 3.5 to 4.0+ that serve 95 average and upwards to 110. The doubters always ask and people post match videos in the past, and then everyone does those frame calculations and it usually averages out to somewhere around those ranges. From my match play experience it is more common than not, and not really too magical. I see bigger serves more in singles though, so was just thinkig about that as an interesting factor and why that might be. Anoth interesting thing that I noticed is, that 100mph seems to be a level, and maybe based on standard mechanics and exquipment. To get over 100mph just seems exponentially harder to make happen than going from 90 to 100 mph. That might just be anecdotal though.

I very much doubt they are serving that fast, I mean I play in Britain at roughly the 3.5 level and I can get most serves back, even from the big servers, at least at my level. I doubt I could regularly return a 110mph serve.

Put it another way, most players who have had a chance to have their serves measured with properly calibrated measuring equipment have been disappointed by the results. My rule of thumb is to knock 20 mph off any claimed speed.
 
As for the unicorn of 100mph, I regularly play guys from high 3.5 to 4.0+ that serve 95 average and upwards to 110. The doubters always ask and people post match videos in the past, and then everyone does those frame calculations and it usually averages out to somewhere around those ranges. From my match play experience it is more common than not, and not really too magical.
So kinda begs the question... can we see this footage of 3.5-4.0 avg 95mph tennis? Yes I'm a doubter who likes being proven wrong.
 

sureshs

Bionic Poster
The serve speed stats I've seen for Diego has his 1st serve average for various events ranging from 98 to 106 mph. This would certainly suggest that his fastest serves were above these average serve speeds.

I've come across plenty male collegiate, 5.0+ players and top juniors who could serve in excess of 100 mph. Even some HS and sub-5.0 players. But this does not necessarily mean that these players are hitting most of their first serves far in excess of 100 mph. Perhaps many can hit their faster serves in about 60% of the time. But this does not mean that they are hitting a high % of their 1st serves close to their top speed.

I recall that TennisSpeed.com published some serve speeds for collegiate and competitive junior players back in 2007. Doesn't look like the site is up any longer but a bit of it is archived on the WayBack Machine. Also managed to dig up this link:


Recently, a National Open Junior event was held in Denver for the Boys 18s division, and I used that opportunity to measure the serve speeds (first and second) of the participants there...

I measured the serve speeds of 34 of the 64 participants during live matchplay, and the results I found were interesting to say the least.

The fastest first serve was 118 MPH and the fastest second serve was 94 MPH...


30% of the total number of first serves measured (200+) exceeded 100 MPH.

70% of the players hit a first serve over 100 MPH.

15% of the 30% of the total number of first serves measured (200+) exceeded 100 MPH.

70% of the players hit a first serve over 100 MPH.

15% of the players hit a first serve over 110 MPH. hit a first serve over 110 MPH.

I was talking about fat old club players who picked up tennis as an adult
 

Rosstour

G.O.A.T.
Sampras had ape length arms that hung past mid thigh.
Eddy Dibbs at 5'8" was timed many times during match play at 125+.
But I'm pretty sure Kriek was the biggest serving short guy in ATP.

I decided to verify this, and found this thread from 2006. And someone named @LeeD is posting in it.

 
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