Coco Gauf’s Second Serve: A Technical Analysis

[seano]

If you refer to Dr. Gordon's video "The Hesitation Point" found under the Biomechanics section, around the 4:00 mark till the end, he gives a great explanation/demonstration of what the forward entry looks like and the problems involved with it.

[seano]

Totally agree about starting students in probation.

[stotty]

Stotty -

Thank you for the compliment. To answer your questions:

1) Coco's racquet drop - You are correct in your interpretation. If you are looking at Coco from a front side view, ideally the racquet head would disappear behind her head. In Coco's case, her racquet head will go way past her head and even slightly past her left shoulder. She does this only on her 2nd serve, her 1st serve is much closer to behind her head. The interesting thing is that her racquet drop wasn't this pronounced in August 2023 when I also took footage at a tournament. Something changed.

2a) The racquet drop correction could be done 2 quick ways that come to mind. 1) Stand so you are facing your students back side (side view). Touch the tip of your racquet head against her left (for a righty) shoulder blade (your racquet is perpendicular to the line of their back). As the student drops their racquet behind their head, their racquet should not touch your racquet. If it does, they have gone too far forward. The racquet should drop more over the right shoulder blade than their left shoulder blade. I learned that from Dennis Van Der Meer, when I was the director at one of his tennis centers.

2b) The second method, I'm not as familiar with but BG showed it to me this March when I showed him my footage of Coco. He stood behind me with a PCV tube about shoulder height, parallel to the baseline and my racquet dragged along the pipe till it naturally fell behind my head, like it's supposed to. I need a better visual of this method being done to fully understand it.

3) Elbow position in trophy - I would need to see video of her elbow position but in general I have seen plenty of lower than 90 degree elbow positions that were able to have the racquet head disappear behind the head. For a lower elbow in trophy, I've had success with either tying a towel around a students upper arm (cover bicep and tricep) and they can feel when the towel touches their side. Instead of a towel, I have also used one of those little kids floaty arm devices that kids wear so they don't go under water. Place the blown up device around your students upper arm, like you did the towel. The blown up device will hit their side when the elbow has dropped too low.

Hope that's clear and makes sense.

Sean

Thanks so much for your considered reply and your help. I will try 2a and see what develops from it.

The reason I asked about the elbow position is that BG suggests an angle of 90 degree (slightly lower is acceptable) and that the racket be positioned far away from the head. BG states he doesn't want the elbow any lower but doesn't state why exactly. When I get my student's elbow at 90 degrees it does reduce forward entry but not entirely, so I wondered if the elbow position plays a significant part in getting the racket to pass the centre of a player's head.

Probation is a hell of a patient job but in the space of a month I have made significant progress with my student. I have taken the decision to start most students off this way as it gets things off to a better start, and especially in the case of girls.

[seano]

Stotty -

Thank you for the compliment. To answer your questions:

1) Coco's racquet drop - You are correct in your interpretation. If you are looking at Coco from a front side view, ideally the racquet head would disappear behind her head. In Coco's case, her racquet head will go way past her head and even slightly past her left shoulder. She does this only on her 2nd serve, her 1st serve is much closer to behind her head. The interesting thing is that her racquet drop wasn't this pronounced in August 2023 when I also took footage at a tournament. Something changed.

2a) The racquet drop correction could be done 2 quick ways that come to mind. 1) Stand so you are facing your students back side (side view). Touch the tip of your racquet head against her left (for a righty) shoulder blade (your racquet is perpendicular to the line of their back). As the student drops their racquet behind their head, their racquet should not touch your racquet. If it does, they have gone too far forward. The racquet should drop more over the right shoulder blade than their left shoulder blade. I learned that from Dennis Van Der Meer, when I was the director at one of his tennis centers.

2b) The second method, I'm not as familiar with but BG showed it to me this March when I showed him my footage of Coco. He stood behind me with a PCV tube about shoulder height, parallel to the baseline and my racquet dragged along the pipe till it naturally fell behind my head, like it's supposed to. I need a better visual of this method being done to fully understand it.

3) Elbow position in trophy - I would need to see video of her elbow position but in general I have seen plenty of lower than 90 degree elbow positions that were able to have the racquet head disappear behind the head. For a lower elbow in trophy, I've had success with either tying a towel around a students upper arm (cover bicep and tricep) and they can feel when the towel touches their side. Instead of a towel, I have also used one of those little kids floaty arm devices that kids wear so they don't go under water. Place the blown up device around your students upper arm, like you did the towel. The blown up device will hit their side when the elbow has dropped too low.

Hope that's clear and makes sense.

Sean

[stotty]

Congratulations on a super article, Sean.

A couple of questions: With regard to Coco's racket drop, when you say the racket goes past her left shoulder, does this mean her racket head doesn't pass through the centre of Coco's head...as BG puts it? It's hard to tell from the clip. If so, how does one correct that?

I have a girl on probation. I have synched the leg drive but the racket head doesn't quite pass through the centre of her head. Would this be because her elbow in probation is set slightly too low? Would having a lower than 90 degree elbow in probation (or more correctly an elbow that sinks slight before descending into the backswing) be the cause of the problem? It's not major like Coco's but all the same it would be nice to strive for perfection.

[seano]

Chris -

Thanks for your comments. One of the reasons I appreciate Tennisplayers.net so much is the wealth of knowledge it has from Industry leading researchers like Dr. Brian Gordon and Dr. Ben Kibler. There are multiple articles from both Dr. Gordon and Dr. Kibler on the website. I appreciate your view of being cautious about drawing direct links between injuries and possible causations, very valid opinion. My point was to be careful of putting unnecessary stress on joints or body parts because of ones technique. Dr. Kibler discusses the point of putting undue stress on the shoulder and lower back with the "pull down" serve method, in his "push up" vs. "pull down" video.

An answer to being able to put scientific data into stroke analysis and development may be right around the corner. Over the last several years I've been fortunate enough to be able to spend time each year with Dr. Brian Gordon in Boca Raton and discuss technique. He's been very generous with his time. I believe it's in next month's issue, that another article I wrote will be about Dr. Gordon's affiliation with the German company "Simi" in developing a "markerless motion capture" system. This 3D Motion capture produces a 3D "mapping" of a stroke. 3D quantification is the most sophisticated form of information that can be used for stroke development. It's a very rare, very expensive system with maybe a handful of them in the world. It may be able to finally answer all these complicated stroke analysis questions. In the past, Brian has had to use the cumbersome and time consuming method of placing up to 70 sensors on a student/racquet to be able to get this data. Now it will be "markerless" and you'll be able to receive the data in real time. Very interesting times ahead for tennis stroke research.

Sean

[clewit]

Also, We should be cautious to draw a direct link between pulling the head down and risk of injury in the shoulder and abdomen. I am not aware of any research study that shows a correlation or causation between the two. There may be a link, but there may not be. We do not know for sure why Venus suffered from abdominal injuries--we can only surmise. I believe Dr. Brian Gordon has demonstrated excessive activation of the abdominals from an early entry into the racquet drop, in his private research, what Dr. Kibler would describe as the "pull" serve. Even then, I don't think Dr. Kibler or Dr. Brian Gordon can point to any definitive peer reviewed study linking the "pull" type serve to higher injury rates in the shoulder and abdominals. We should be cautious making statements about injury risk that are not evidence-based. That's my main concern.

Thanks
Chris

[clewit]

Thanks for the article Sean.

1. In the Back Bend part, Coco is hitting a kick serve from the ad court but are Raonic and Sinner also hitting kick serves? Sinner is hitting from the deuce from a different camera angle. This makes it hard to compare. Also, cervical and thoracic extension are important for the kick serve and many top pro servers have significant cervical and thoracic extension in their spines. This does not mean they will get injured. Some pros, perhaps Sinner and Raonic, may hit with less arch in their backs. It's also hard to determine the angle of the arch in the spine from high speed video due to clothing that the athletes wear.

2. In the Upward Swing and Followthrough section, it looks like Coco is hitting a kick serve but Raonic and Sinner are hitting flat power serves. This makes comparing internal shoulder rotation potentially flawed between the Coco and the others. The long axis pronation will look different for a kick versus a flat power serve.

3. Coco does drop her head and should probabably keep it up longer into the impact. That's a good habit. But there are also many pros who do not keep their heads up at impact and still serve very well. That head dropping just before contact may not affect her serve delivery as much as we think.

Thanks for commenting.

Chris

[stroke]

Just some stats on this topic that might be of interest to readers.

For the tournament, Coco Gauff played 5 matches and had 23 double faults vs 75 points won on second serve.
Her average second serve speed in the semifinal was 90 MPH and she won 10 of 31 points behind her second serve that day.

https://www.rolandgarros.com/en-us/matches/2024/SD002

That seems like too many doubles.

[jimlosaltos]

Just some stats on this topic that might be of interest to readers.

For the tournament, Coco Gauff played 5 matches and had 23 double faults vs 75 points won on second serve.
Her average second serve speed in the semifinal was 90 MPH and she won 10 of 31 points behind her second serve that day.

https://www.rolandgarros.com/en-us/matches/2024/SD002

[johnyandell]

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