How fast do recreational players serve?

120+ technique is simply greater than that found in rec players.
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The guy doesn't even really play tennis - he just likes to do athletic stuff and show it off on youtube. A serve is basically a throwing motion..

If you have a big arm you can pick it up quick and blast some big flat serves. But clearly there are rec players who serve 100+ - even low ranking ones.

This challenged is resolved.

Rec players can serve 100+ It's not so magical mystical thing that hardly anyone can do. My gut feeling is that most men of average weight and height will hit right around 100 mph with a serve without significant technical flaws.

If you are bigger and/or taller - you should be hitting even harder serves. We know from baseball that throwing speed is correlated with these two factors..
 
GuyClinch said:
The guy doesn't even really play tennis - he just likes to do athletic stuff and show it off on youtube. A serve is basically a throwing motion..

If you have a big arm you can pick it up quick and blast some big flat serves. But clearly there are rec players who serve 100+ - even low ranking ones.

This challenged is resolved.

Rec players can serve 100+
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The challenge is *120+*. If the only resolution is some guy (touting himself as the greatest athlete we've never heard of) with tennis training in his youth (bio states mvp of hs team); pretty much abandoning tennis for a try at pro-baseball, hitting one long serve I'm content that the challenge is indeed resolved :)
 
tennis_ocd said:
120+ technique is simply greater than that found in rec players.
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You're simply wrong about this.

We all agree that rec-players hitting 120+ is extremely rare, but it does exist!

I'm certain I've hit over 120mph, but since I don't have it on video and I can't hit that fast now (the fastest I've clocked in the past 3-years is 115mph) just assume that I can't meet the standard. I actually believe LeeD could serve over 120 about 30-40 years ago (though I think he probably overestimates his speed now).

However, I've seen rec-players meet that standard (in club tennis about 15 years ago), and I know of others who could if they trained properly. One of my younger brothers was hitting 110mph in high school with poor technique. Given how hard he could throw a baseball, he should have been hitting 130mph.

Some rec players are actually good athletes, hard as that may be to believe.
 
Fxanimator1 said:
I am a bad judge of serve speeds then, because those look like 70-75 mph to my non-radar gun eye's.
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I'm not going to guess... video no doubt tends to slow down play; it's always faster live. Credit for putting it up and that they both appear to have nice rec motions (which in itself is a very good thing.) To me, they appear to have incredibly good/average rec court serves. It gets the point started; nobody's going to be scared to stand in there to return. It's what I see everyday and I can't image some wta player finding it useful to practice returns.

The vid is always a tease. It always leaves me longing for a few points and to see some 5.0 level volleys. sigh.
 
Well so after downloading the 128 mph serve and importing it to Adobe Premiere and getting the audio in sync with the image as it is about 2 frames off, I've managed to accurately count the frames per second, with the video you see, i count exactly 7 and a half frames per second which at 24 FPS equaled 140 mph, to actually get the serve to clock out at the supposed 128 mph i had to slow down the video by 11%, it took a bit of mucking around but i think that's that finally, when i played back the video at 89% speed it actually looked much more normal, serve still looked fast but didn't seem as fast because the audio was in sync and you don't hear the sound of the contact point and the ball hitting the fence as fast as you do when you watch the video, the audio is a little slower but in sync with the image/video

I can say this was accurate as the video downloaded at 24 FPS and Adobe Premiere counted it all properly with no anomalies, meaning the video was still intact and much like the original copy that JMIKE has sitting somewhere in his house, albeit the one i believe was sped up just to clear that up lol, so not the original original one, sorry to be such a **** about all this but i just wanted to get to the bottom of this video, i guess its the sherlock holmes within me
 
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WildVolley said:
You're simply wrong about this.

We all agree that rec-players hitting 120+ is extremely rare, but it does exist!
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There are some 7+ billion people on the planet; everything likely exists somewhere.

My point is 120+ is thrown around here like candy. I've seen hundreds of rec people, club players, hs kids/tourneys, usta stuff and have yet to see it. And I see lower level atp guys, young guys with live arms in the prime of their live's, striving to hit it and falling short.

I put the 120+ rec guy into the catagory of ufos, bigfoot and the loch ness monster.... going to need to see it. I will be in awe.
 
tennis_ocd said:
My point is 120+ is thrown around here like candy.
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Who throws it around like candy? Maybe, LeeD talking about playing open tournaments about 30-40 years ago.

The last guy I saw on public courts clearly hitting 120mph + (2-years ago) was an ex-division 1 player, so he doesn't fit your criteria. And he wasn't nearly as tall as the rec-player I saw hitting that speed years before.
 
tennis_ocd said:
There are some 7+ billion people on the planet; everything likely exists somewhere.

My point is 120+ is thrown around here like candy. I've seen hundreds of rec people, club players, hs kids/tourneys, usta stuff and have yet to see it. And I see lower level atp guys, young guys with live arms in the prime of their live's, striving to hit it and falling short.

I put the 120+ rec guy into the catagory of ufos, bigfoot and the loch ness monster.... going to need to see it. I will be in awe.
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I agree, why do people seem to think that finding a guy that can serve at 120 mph is a miracle, I've seen random dudes in my years, big tall guys that had bad technique weren't all that great at tennis and hit about 1/20 hard/flat serves in but whenever they did they had to have been 120 mph + easily, 120 mph is not that rare, 130 mph and 140 mph is when i start questioning people, but 120 mph, realistically even in real life 120 mph doesn't particularly look that fast, have people on these boards actually been to tennis matches? I very low and flat 120 mph serve will look quite fast, but generally speaking 120 mph isn't like a bullet, anything over the low 130's is though
 
If I can pop it into the 105-110 range I'm sure someone bigger and younger can hit into the 120's. Again, talking top end here, not what is actually used in matches.
 
Nickzor said:
Well so after downloading the 128 mph serve and importing it to Adobe Premiere and getting the audio in sync with the image as it is about 2 frames off, I've managed to accurately count the frames per second, with the video you see, i count exactly 7 and a half frames per second which at 24 FPS equaled 140 mph, to actually get the serve to clock out at the supposed 128 mph i had to slow down the video by 11%, it took a bit of mucking around but i think that's that finally, when i played back the video at 89% speed it actually looked much more normal, serve still looked fast but didn't seem as fast because the audio was in sync and you don't hear the sound of the contact point and the ball hitting the fence as fast as you do when you watch the video, the audio is a little slower but in sync with the image/video

I can say this was accurate as the video downloaded at 24 FPS and Adobe Premiere counted it all properly with no anomalies, meaning the video was still intact and much like the original copy that JMIKE has sitting somewhere in his house, albeit the one i believe was sped up just to clear that up lol, so not the original original one, sorry to be such a **** about all this but i just wanted to get to the bottom of this video, i guess its the sherlock holmes within me
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Did you have to use a 3/2 pull down, becasue it was 24 fps?
 
Ballinbob said:
Mbm-I've had multiple people check my serve speed using the frame count method and just about all of them came in at 100mph+. Feel free to try it yourself on anyone of my first serves. And I hope your serve is coming along well with the takeback, it's weird but it works lol
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Thanks Bb, it's helped me considerably with the earlier take back. Now if I could just stay "loose" on my motion all of the time.. Your serves are looking great btw.
 
Fxanimator1 said:
Did you have to use a 3/2 pull down, becasue it was 24 fps?
Click to expand...

Why on earth would i need to convert a 24 FPS YOUTUBE video to a higher frame rate in order to simply count some frames? I've got a few videos of me serving at 60 fps and well let me tell you the whole counting frames thing to find out your service speed goes to **** when you film at 48 FPS or 60 FPS for some strange reason, i mean i got 187 mph on a serve i did filmed at 60 FPS when i counted the frames, which is probably not right. As i said my goal was to match up the correct number of frames at 24 FPS to get it right at 128 mph, in order to do that i had to slow down the footage by about 10% as i suspect the upload was sped up, increasing the frame rate would only result in me probably getting a ridiculous serve speed like 200 mph as that is what happened when i tried to calculate my own speed on footage i filmed at 60 fps with a pretty good dslr camera as well, when i scanned through the frames i didn't get 2 frames of the same image or anything odd so i didn't see the need to do such a thing, I'm not that familiar with the term but i don't think its generally used in doing something pretty simple as i was doing, or am i missing something here
 
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Nickzor said:
Why on earth would i need to convert a 24 FPS YOUTUBE video to a higher frame rate in order to simply count some frames? I've got a few videos of me serving at 60 fps and well let me tell you the whole counting frames thing to find out your service speed goes to **** when you film at 48 FPS or 60 FPS for some strange reason, i mean i got 187 mph on a serve i did filmed at 60 FPS when i counted the frames, which is probably not right. As i said my goal was to match up the correct number of frames at 24 FPS to get it right at 128 mph, in order to do that i had to slow down the footage by about 10% as i suspect the upload was sped up, increasing the frame rate would only result in me probably getting a ridiculous serve speed like 200 mph as that is what happened when i tried to calculate my own speed on footage i filmed at 60 fps with a pretty good dslr camera as well, when i scanned through the frames i didn't get 2 frames of the same image or anything odd so i didn't see the need to do such a thing, I'm not that familiar with the term but i don't think its generally used in doing something pretty simple as i was doing, or am i missing something here
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Why on earth are you getting mad? I just asked a question that I didn't know the answer to.
 
tennis_ocd said:
Is he a D1 player? 95ish with a lot of spin and movement. He's not powering that thing by anyone.
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Yeah I'm guessing right about 95-100mph BUT with crap loads of spin. There was an ace that sailed right by the opponent's shoulder (48 second mark)!

Man.. I wish I was a little bit taller... :)
 
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The challenge is *120+*. If the only resolution is some guy (touting himself as the greatest athlete we've never heard of) with tennis training in his youth (bio states mvp of hs team); pretty much abandoning tennis for a try at pro-baseball, hitting one long serve I'm content that the challenge is indeed resolved
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straws.grasping.

So if you played on a HS Team you don't qualify as rec anymore? LMAO. Come on - let's keep it real. Plenty of HS teams don't even have a player better then 3.5. You can't disqualify people from 'rec' status if they happen to be good. Some rec players have big serves. Let's just get over it.

Lots of professional women actually have a pretty poor motion and have to get coached up to be able to hit 100mph serves. Men with a backaround in any throwing sport like baseball, javelin, football QB etc are all going to be able to serve very well with minimal practice. Like another poster said SOME rec tennis players are actually good athletes.
 
GuyClinch said:
straws.grasping.

So if you played on a HS Team you don't qualify as rec anymore? LMAO. Come on - let's keep it real. Plenty of HS teams don't even have a player better then 3.5.
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120+. rec. (def: non-professional or ex-prof, preferably non-D1 as I'm guessing there are like a handful that could hit 120.) HS is certainly fair game -- just pointing out that JMike appears to have some HS tennis foundation and was borderline prof/D1 baseball player.

Hey, if some funky JMike video of a two foot long serve is all you can find claim victory and move on. He can crush the thing....
 
2nd serves, obviously not.
1st serves, if you hit it hard, and it goes IN, yes, you have the potential to hit 100+, with a good motion, a fast swing.
 
RJ-L said:
Would i qualify for a 100+ mph serve rec level? ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvcUfmNau2Q

Around 1 minute
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If you are serious, I can give you the reality....or you can go with the TW forum ultra inflation. We must have measured serves with a calibrated gun for 3.5 hours last night. Gotten pretty good at being close to what the gun actually measures.

Your fastest serve in that video was upper 70s, maybe 80 tops.
 
To be fair....
You got ONE first serve IN, not your fastest.
Your fastest was hit at 36 seconds, into the net cord.
Your second serves don't go 70, but a bit less, as you don't swing fast nor really get it in consistently.
 
Are we watching the same video? because i count 3 first serves in.

@TCF i think your radar gun is probably off.
a month ago my serves were clocked at 115 mph at the ABN atp tournament in Rotterdam.

These serves wont hit the 115 but the certainly hit the 100 mph mark.
 
One of your serves is clearly a slice serve, with a slight top component, later in the vid. That is slower.
I think your serve at 36, the net cord buster, is your fastest, and over 100 easily.
BUT, it would be nice to see an IN serve go flat and fast from you.
 
1st player is only hitting top/slice, so it can't be 100 unless it's hit by Groth.
2nd player hit's fast, with an short motion.
3rd player might be an Open level player.
 
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