My serving stance.

[kenknight]

When looking at different service stances, I've seen that they all tend to fall into: Platform, Pinpoint, and Roddick. :P

After reading through the Roddick serve articles in the Advanced Tennis section (which were GREAT, by the way), what stood out was his stance and using both feet in the leg drive. Which I've already seen, even before getting the amazing footage on this site, is little to nothing with normal stances.

I was taught and started firmly with the typical platform stance, and "rocking forward" at the start and putting weight onto the front foot.

Over time though, I changed this. Instead of using the front foot, I simply took the starting stance and bent equally with both feet, pushing off the ground with both.

But the distance between the feet is normal, not extremely close together and almost parallel like Roddick -I just have the normal platform stance but just bend down instead of rocking forward.

Will this hurt me? In order to achieve the most effective leg drive, would keeping the feet close together help a lot? Or would I be better off going back to the traditional platform?

Thanks.

[johnyandell]

Video Ken, we need video... it's just hard to say. Everyone has jumped on the Roddick stance (glad you liked the article by the way) but I'm not sure that it's better or as good than the platform. What I typically see though is that what people think they are doing with stances isn't always accurate--and that the stance can be related to other more basic problems...

[ignite]

I think having the feet closer together would allow you to create more leg drive, but at the same time you won't have a lot of momentum or flow into your serve from the body. It will come from the legs and the arms.

In my mind the Agassi serve in some ways is very similar to the serve of Andy Roddick. Not in the power mind you But Agassi has a very short base with his serve, but uses good leg drive to generate his power.

Different strokes, different folks (excuse the pun ). Would be interested in seeing a video though, and seeing what analysis we can make.

Anthony