my non-professional subjective opinion
ZPTennis said:
Thanks FitzRoy. Yeah i've heard before that people don't think I toss the ball very high which is true. But the way I see it is, if your hitting the ball sooner after the toss than everyone else, then you won't need as high of a toss. I've been trying to incorporate a little more knee bend lately with the same motion. The speed is staying the same but the consistency is going way up.
As far as the speed, i've been radared at 131 before and that gave me a pretty good feel for judging speed after that. In my videos, the fastest serves are actually the ones in the serve side view. It was the 3rd and 4th serve in that video which were the fastest. I would guess both of those were over 130. The sound on those were better than the rest.
The straight on view ones were probably 125ish.
130s? Nice, and now for the critique...but I first want to state that I am still learning the game even after nearly two decades of playing.
The Kick serve - the tossing arm doesn't extend fully upward - vertical. Rather it kind of extends into the court, but I believe that "pros" will extend perpendicular to the ground instead of being angled from the ground. It goes the same with the flat serve too. (I think someone already mentioned knee bending.)
So with the tossing arm, that would also lead into the hip moving into the court more so that you could transfer the weight into the serve, creating a lil more "umph" into the swing.
As far as the forehand, I would prefer having the non-hitting arm "parallel" that of your forehand. In other words, when you make contact with the ball, the arm position of the non-hitting arm should be a near mirror image of it. You currently have your left arm almost "hugging" your body at that point. You start off pretty good with the nonhitting arm coming across the body - it could be "better" if you straighten it out instead of having it slightly bent prior to making contact with the ball. (BTW, what you do now is currently better than 90% of all recreational players I have seen here.)
For the footwork, you drag your feet a lil too much for me during the forehand. I would encourage you to be on your a toes a lil more. Why? Well, I want to know how much of your lower body goes into the shot. I haven't exacted all the techniques of every stroke, but I would imagine that you aren't fully utilizing your lower body to its potential.
Let me explain - I apologize if you do this already but just saying for clarity sakes - prior to hitting, you should have the majority of your weight on the back foot. At impact, you want to transfer the weight and have a 50:50 balance of weight distribution on both feet. Then when you follow through, the wt. transfers to the front foot ensuring that you get full lower body into shot to help with moment transfer. So by having your back foot slide would "slow" down the pace and in effect alter the full potential of the swing.
On a positive swing, you do something that I cannot do just quite yet. You most proably have the correct drop during your service where the racquet falls along side your body - see below pic. I don't quite get there yet. Its a working progress. The picture is from jef's website - its not mine but his.
