Minimum speed of serve for the ball to hit back fence on 1st bounce?

[jrod]

Jrod, I have not seen you on the boards in a while. I won't say every serve I hit in the warmup hits the back fence, because I go easy on the first few. I will say that every flat serve I hit in a match will hit the back fence after bouncing.

We have a facility that I used to play at a lot where the ball goes through the fence a few times a match. I was playing a friend of mine who wife was watching from behind the court. I aced him and almost took out her eye afterwards!

Hey Mikeler- I think you attributed bet's comments to me. No harm. I tend to agree with both of you, in principle. That is, a decent kick serve can easily hit the back fence on the 1st bounce at relatively slow speeds (<75 mph) whereas a flat serve requires more pace to hit it (>85 mph?).

 

[mikeler]

Hey Mikeler- I think you attributed bet's comments to me. No harm. I tend to agree with both of you, in principle. That is, a decent kick serve can easily hit the back fence on the 1st bounce at relatively slow speeds (<75 mph) whereas a flat serve requires more pace to hit it (>85 mph?).

Oops too much wine last night! Both you and Bet are good posters.

 

[maverick66]

I wouldn't call it ugly. I was just curious.

i like to give jolly a hard time about having ugly strokes. he knows it but whats great is he doesnt care cause it works for him.

 

[J011yroger]

i like to give jolly a hard time about having ugly strokes. he knows it but whats great is he doesnt care cause it works for him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au17YpGAa-s

J

 

[bet]

Oops too much wine last night! Both you and Bet are good posters.

lol. Don't try to use that excuse on your wife/gf! Anyways, the respect is mutual.

Fair enough, if your experience is different, in terms of needing to go faster to hit the fence. It may well have to do with conditions, eg. court surface, humidity, altitude, just how "flat" your flat ball is, the angle etc...I certainly notice a difference between courts. Nonetheless, when serving with radar, I find that I can hit the fence (not impressively by any means!) with a very, very weak serve. You can do it with a solid "pat", so to speak. On the other hand, sometimes I find the depth/height of my bounce on the fastest serves does not always translate to mph. I can hit a flat 100mph and have it bounce up 4 feet on the fence, fairly powerfully or hit a 120mph serve and have it hit 3 feet up (perhaps a bit more powerfully). I usually think this is due to a bit of spin being picked up.

In any case, I use type of impact on the fence to tell me some things(basically trying to get the type of bounce I want for that serve and a bit of feedback on the spin) in practice, but I'm not sure it has much value as a judgment of speed measure....maybe +/- 10-20mph....but really, if you have a real (not the imaginary, "I'm sure it is" big serves here ;-) 100mph serve, you can already make a closer judgment than that!

For the non-big server who wants feedback on his speed...well, a clean 80mph can hit the fence easily....I also think 60mph can....but in any case, all I can really say based on that alone, is if you AREN'T hitting the fence, we have a problem!