Shoulder torsion on serve...

[gzhpcu]

Here are some photos of Tony Trabert's shoulder turn on the serve. I used to read that you should almost show your back to your opponent.

Lots of pros today do not do it though. Wawrinka doesn't seem to do it, for example. Points his chest towards the ball, but very little upper body torsion.

Seems to me that this torsion adds speed to the kinetic chain.

Maybe this is more a charateristic of the retro serve when you were not allowed to jump?

[gzhpcu]

Photos from an old booklet I have in my library... 1954

[gzhpcu]

Pat Rafter had a pretty good shoulder turn...

[stotty]

Wired a certain way

Here are some photos of Tony Trabert's shoulder turn on the serve. I used to read that you should almost show your back to your opponent.

Lots of pros today do not do it though. Wawrinka doesn't seem to do it, for example. Points his chest towards the ball, but very little upper body torsion.

Seems to me that this torsion adds speed to the kinetic chain.

Maybe this is more a charateristic of the retro serve when you were not allowed to jump?

It's interesting that many players can serve close to their full speed just standing on the baseline starting the serve just from the trophy position. Just with racket arm speed. I can hit very close to my full speed doing this and you can bet a pro can too. I think adding knee-bend, rotation and all that stuff spreads the load and makes achieving full speed easier. I think a player like Wawrinka would have to "muscle" slightly more to make up for his reduced turn. Tanner didn't rotate much and relied more on that very fast arm of his.

I think there are many way to skin a cat but some ways are more efficient than others. I think the better a player spreads the load of his serve, the more efficient and reliable it will become.

The best serves are slick. Federer, Gonzales, Sampras, Stich, Krajicek...real slick.

Wawrinka has an odd serve yet it all comes together. You wouldn't teach anyone to serve that way, would you? But it works well for Stan and his coaches likely did the right thing allowing him to roll with it.

As coaches we all have images in our head of the strokes we would like to achieve for students, but some players are wired a certain way and the racket ends up going the path it wants.