pushing_wins
Hall of Fame
how fast is a flat serve down the middle, hitting the back fence 3 ft high one bounce?
serve speed: how fast?
- Thread starter pushing_wins
- Start date
chrisplchs
Professional
depends if the ball is coming up or coming down and how far back the fence is. there are lots of factors including height of the player and contact point as well as if the ball is new or not.
How in the world would we be able to tell you? we don't know what the dimensions are from the baseline to the back fence, the amount of spin on the flat serve, tension of your strings, mass of your racquet, velocity of your swing, etc... come on now use some brain power. This is not the first time someone has asked this...!!!
USE A RADAR GUN
Sheshh....
USE A RADAR GUN
Sheshh....
pushing_wins
Hall of Fame
MTXR said:
one of the personality trait coaches scout for is tolerance of frustration.
need i say more.
you got a spare radar gun i could borrow
tennis-n-sc
Professional
pushing_wins said:
YOu can't judge the speed of a serve by where it hits on the court and the fence. You can probably rent a radar somewhere. Get ready for a big surprise.
S
snoflewis
Guest
kevhen said:
how can you so easily assume it's that speed? you don't know anything about how he hits. i mean...i can hit the back fence 3 ft high w/ the serve still going in, and it won't be close to a 100 mph. i've hit it 4-5 feet high...and they're still not even close to 100.
If you hit a flat serve with not much spin then you should be able to approximate how fast it is going by how high it is on the fence. Include some video of your serve. Again mine is about 110mph and bouncing about 5 feet up the net on this fast surface. It's still rising when it hits the netting. On slower outdoor it's about 4 feet high and on it's way back down.
TennsDog
Hall of Fame
Yeah, it is impossible to tell the speed of a serve any way other than having a very good feel for speed as a returner or using a radar gun (unless you want to go the technical route of using high speed cameras and timing it that way). Aside from court dimentions, serve placement, and spin (nothing is truly flat), your height makes a huge difference in there it will hit the fence. I'm 5'8" and I have a hard time even getting a flat serve to ever get 3' up the fence no matter how hard I hit it just because of the angles. Ivo Karlovic wouldn't have to hit anywhere near 110 mph on a flat serve to get it 3' up the fence.
Something else people try to use to determine serve speed is if it sticks in the fence. This is also utterly useless for the purpose. Whether or not the ball sticks is dependent on ball pressure, spin, age of the fence, and exact location of where the ball hits in the links. Even a 200 mph serve won't stick it it nails the cross of two links. Similarly, a 20 mph serve can stick with sufficient spin and placement. I have hit plenty of weak forehands with spin that bounced 4 times before getting to the fence and they still stuck.
Something else people try to use to determine serve speed is if it sticks in the fence. This is also utterly useless for the purpose. Whether or not the ball sticks is dependent on ball pressure, spin, age of the fence, and exact location of where the ball hits in the links. Even a 200 mph serve won't stick it it nails the cross of two links. Similarly, a 20 mph serve can stick with sufficient spin and placement. I have hit plenty of weak forehands with spin that bounced 4 times before getting to the fence and they still stuck.
ZPTennis
Semi-Pro
Yeah, where it lands on the fence cant really give you an indication..
Believe it or not, even flat serves can have spin which effects how it bounces. Some peoples flat serves have topspin, no spin, and even underspin. This will change where it hits the fence by quite a bit even with the same speed serve.
Zach
Believe it or not, even flat serves can have spin which effects how it bounces. Some peoples flat serves have topspin, no spin, and even underspin. This will change where it hits the fence by quite a bit even with the same speed serve.
Zach
Midlife crisis
Hall of Fame
pushing_wins said:
How fast can you throw a baseball? Your maximum serve speed will be approximately 50% faster than you can throw a baseball.
If you don't know how fast you can throw a baseball, try a throw from second base to home on a full sized field, which is about 127 feet, and do it with only taking one step, like a pitcher. If you can make it on the fly and keep the ball under 10 feet high the whole way, you can probably throw nearly 80 MPH and would be able to serve nearly 120 MPH. About 12 feet high and you're in the lower 70's, with about a possibility of a 105 MPH serve. If you have to get it up to about 15 feet high, then you're probably throwing in the upper 60's and would have a maximum serve speed in the 90's. If you have to really lob it to get it to reach, or can't get it to reach at all, you're probably looking at a maximum serve of about 70-75 MPH.
BTW, if you could throw the ball around 100 MPH with a crow-hop, which would give you a Roddick-class serve, you could "throw" a homerun in any major league baseball park since you'll be able to let it fly about 350 feet.
pushing_wins
Hall of Fame
where can u rent a radar gun?
i called rent-all places, they dont have it
i called rent-all places, they dont have it
tennis-n-sc
Professional
pushing_wins said:
Know any cops?
Andres
G.O.A.T.
Why is that picture speeded up? Don't you think it would be more helpful if the image is in real speed?kevhen said:If you hit a flat serve with not much spin then you should be able to approximate how fast it is going by how high it is on the fence. Include some video of your serve. Again mine is about 110mph and bouncing about 5 feet up the net on this fast surface. It's still rising when it hits the netting. On slower outdoor it's about 4 feet high and on it's way back down.
Bungalo Bill
G.O.A.T.
pushing_wins said:
Yeah, that is true. Also, another trait important to anyone is the ability to research a question you have before asking it! People have asked this kind of question over and over again. I still scratch my head as to why.
Also, to answer, you can't tell by it hitting the back of a fence. The fence dimensions around a court can vary as well as the hieght of a player. You really need a more scientific way of determining this which means rent a radar gun.
Midlife crisis
Hall of Fame
ZPTennis said:Going by the 50% rule,
I doubt Roger Clemens or Nolan Ryan could serve a tennis ball 150mph.
Maybe if they had really worked at perfecting the service motion..
What prevents most people from serving harder is that they don't pronate properly, mostly because they don't slow down/stop their upper arm just prior to the contact point. However, if you watch both Ryan and Clemens pitch in slow motion, you'll see they have this facet just about perfected considering the weight of the baseball. It really would be just a matter of practice for them before they get the amount of racquet head speed that would be necessary.
Jay27
Rookie
pushing_wins said:
I highly recommend forking about $120 - $130 for a new SpeedChek Radar Gun that uses the Doppler technology. I purchased this piece of equipment and have found that I'm not nearly as fast as I once thought. It was a rude and crude awakening. This radar gun is really nice and it's designed for tennis, baseball, hockey and other sports. It actually clocks your serve speed 8 times before it reaches the radar gun and then displays the median average of those speeds. So, my buddy and I were having a serve off in front of a few other players. We simply wanted to see who could serve faster. I was averaging in the mid to upper 90's and finally broke into the 100's. My fastest serve was 104. His was 103. It was a fun time, but my balls were only bouncing about 3 feet high on the fence. However, if I added more spin to my serve, my speed was really a lot lower but could still reach up 3 to 4 feet on the fence. I'm sure that if my speed was clocked like the pros, my serve speed would probably be a little higher, but with the speedchek radar, it gives me a reference point at which I can make decisions on what I need to improve on. Anyway, that's my two cents.
tennis-n-sc
Professional
Jay27 said:
Thank you.
pushing_wins
Hall of Fame
Bungalo Bill said:
sure, ignore it
i dont see the server complaining
Mike Cottrill
Hall of Fame
kevhen said:
Kevin, I have played against folks that hit serves at 110-115 and even harder. Unless something odd is going on with that video, that is not 110. 10fps is odd..
Mike
Bungalo Bill
G.O.A.T.
pushing_wins said:
No, but I almost saw you crying about it.
pushing_wins
Hall of Fame
Bungalo Bill said:No, but I almost saw you crying about it.
computer servers cry ??????????
Bungalo Bill
G.O.A.T.
pushing_wins said:
No just you.
Andres
G.O.A.T.
It IS speeded up. Look at the guy on the left, his movements are not real. Look the speed of his hand, his racquet, and his first step. Neither does yours. Maybe it's a matter of FPS of the camera. Look at the speed of the toss, andf your overal movement, specially on the left.kevhen said:
Maybe it's a 30 fps video playing as a 15 fps, but you see my point?
It's doesn't look real because at 10 frames per second you eye detects the unsmoothness and herky jerkiness of it. Your eye can't tell anymore at about 20 frames per second. I need higher quality video. But look at the trajectory angle of the ball coming off the bounce and tell me that it's not a fast serve.
Andres
G.O.A.T.
I'm not saying the serve isn't fast. I know how a 10 fps video works, but everything is speeded up. It's what we know in Audio and Video editing as Time Stretch.The trajectory angle of the ball doesn't change because of the speeded up, it's just the balls travels the same distance in less frames. So it's the same trajectory, in less time.kevhen said:
Check out your motion, the speed of the toss, the speed of the leg, the speed of your body. It's not natural. Is unreal.
I'm not doubting how fast you can serve. I'm stating a fact about the video itself. And that video is not at a normal speed
OK, yeah, the video may be like 10-15% fast but not 2 to 1. I took 13 frames from a longer video that my camera says was shot at approximately 10fps and used animation shop and set it to display at .10 seconds between each frame so it's as close to real time as I could get.
I am just saying by the ball bounce that it's still rising and most servers if they don't serve that big, the ball will be already on it's way back down if they hit that flat. I am gone for 3 weeks so all have fun while I am gone. I will be in Europe but unfortunately not at World Cup or Wimbledon.
I am just saying by the ball bounce that it's still rising and most servers if they don't serve that big, the ball will be already on it's way back down if they hit that flat. I am gone for 3 weeks so all have fun while I am gone. I will be in Europe but unfortunately not at World Cup or Wimbledon.
Midlife crisis
Hall of Fame
kevhen said:
Kevhen, you're right. It would hit the fence at the bottom. I remember from the book "The Physics of Baseball" that you need about 100 MPH to get the ball to travel about 350 feet, and since most parks down the lines are in the 310-320 foot range, you can actually throw a home run probably seven or eight rows deep.
Since the Seattle Mariners are my home team, do any of you remember "The Throw" that Ichiro made a few years back against Oakland's Terrence Long? It traveled 220 feet, never more than about 10 feet off the ground. Those who measured the time it took say the ball left his hand at about 105 MPH. A little later that season, during Little League day, they had the spot marked where he let that ball go, and from there third base was just a speck in the distance. It is just not possible to imagine anyone could throw a ball on a line that far.
I've seen one guy who hit serves probably in the middle 130's. Though my fastest serves are within 20 MPH of that, it is just not possible to imagine a serve going that fast until you see it, much less 140 or 150 MPH.
