Interactive Stroke Analysis Roscoe Tanner's Serve

[gzhpcu]

I came across this article by Howard Brody, on the benefits a high toss, and hitting the ball as it falls:

Medicine and Science: Serve

Many players hit their serve when the ball they toss up reaches its peak. If instead, the player were to toss the ball up about 8 inches (20 cm) above the eventual impact point and hit the ball as it was falling, topspin would automatically be added to the ball, with no additional effort by the server. It would not be a lot of topspin (about 10 revolutions/second), but enough to open up the window and allow more serves to go in.
If you are already hitting the ball at a height of 9 feet or more and not hitting it very hard (about 120 mph or 193 km/h), this extra spin will open the window by about 29% since the window is already large. If you try to hit the serve very hard (150 mph and you succeed) you will have a small acceptance window, but the 10 rps of topspin will help you to get an extra 41% of your serves in.

Any thoughts John?

[johnyandell]

Gman et al,

OK let's get a couple of things clear. First I am no throwing anything in the garbage.

The only reason we are even having this dialogue is because I took the trouble to put Roscoe's serve up and create a new section of the site for this to happen. And I think Roscoe's worth discussing because his serve has grown to legendary status.

And I think this discussion has been overall quite productive and that we also need to keep it civil--are you listening CL? If I seemed too dismisssive, then I apologize, but I've looked at these same issues many times over the years. I thought let's take another look and honestly try to see if it's all the same as it appeared, and I think that's the case.

There is no doubt that Roscoe had tremendous racket head speed and you can see that in his motion. There are plenty of people that think the low toss is it for racket head speed, but I'm not one of them. Everyone is free to their own opinion in this great country of ours, but please respect mine as I respect your right to disagree.


I think it is better to get ball speed and racket head speed from the whole body, to use the entire kinetic system. It's clear Roscoe does not use his legs or his torso the way other players do. He relies on that really quick motion and the low toss.

To me this makes him a poor model and very difficult to emulate. Whether I can hit that serve or not ( I can ) or teach that serve ( I could ) is irrelevant. I can hit my grounstrokes with super extreme grips as well. It's just a judgment every player and teacher has to make for themselves.

Please note: This does not mean that I think everyone should have a sky high toss either. You want the toss just high enough to get done what you are trying to do and feel good and smooth and confident doing it. The high toss has no inherent value--it just sets the interval or rhythm.

So I actually agree that 6 inches to 2 feet above contact is about the range. Might be more like 2 and 1/2 feet at the top. Pete is about 2 feet we found, a bit higher than Roger who is probably a little higher than McEnroe.

To me those guys are examples of gorgeous smooth motions that use the legs and the torso. Again it's my preference and I think easier on the arm and more consistent, although for most players these elements shouldn't be as extreme.

The other issue to clear up here is the spin. I have no doubt--as I think I already said--that Tanner could spin the hell out of the ball. ANY 130 MPH serve is going to bounce up pretty darn high. BUT what I do know from our filming and research is that the amount of topspin is directly proportional to the ball position. You can't hit topspin if the racket isn't rising. If the racket tip is straight up and down, it's not rising. If your toss is quite far to the side, the racket tip will point more upward and this is the way Roscoe does it. Doesn't mean he couldn't hit a vicious slice. It's just a different type of ball.

And yes a significant additional increment of topspin is an accidental benefit of the high toss as Howard (and Phil!) point out.

Which brings us to Nadal. I appreciate the plaudits regarding my videography--I wish I had high speed video of all players in all situations and we could just pull them up and compare. It's more than possible that Nadal's toss was lower at Wimbledon, and that could be the reason for his better serving. Again if that is really the case for him, great. And with his motion, that's about the only way he could increase his velocity.

He's an example of the Spanish serve model in which the players are trained to stand open with the feet and the shoulders. This means less body turn and less knee bend, although I think Nadal actually does amazingly well on these elements considering how he starts. Note also that his contact point is also in fairly close to his body--more so than Tanner, so he probably does have more topspin.

So yes--if you lower the toss you will have more racket head speed. If you can keep everything else the same and have a little quicker motion great! But don't do it and sacrifice the other elements.
It's hard and probably impossible to have it all in one motion! Have you guys seen Donald Young's serve??
Super low toss, but tries to have the huge turn and deep knee bend at the same time. I'll put some video of it up in a couple of months as well.

[stroke]

Thanks for your thoughtful response John to questions brought up here in this thread on the Tanner serve. I have not seen Donald Young's serve, but I would be quite interested since you think he does incoporate a quick motion/lower toss with more body action. You mentioned the Spanish teachings on the serve, which you said that Nadal employs. This is the first time I have heard this referance, the Spanish role model for the serve. I think I have an idea as to what you are refering to with the open stance, but doesn't Nadal use a somewhat of a feet close together platform, in a closed stance, during his serve? He kind of does what you mentioned in you piece on the Roddick serve, as to what we could possibly employ, or experiment with, from the Roddick serve model, which is bring one's feet closer together in the starting stance, in order to try to push off both feet as one goes after the toss. I beleive you also mentioned in this piece that your colleague, Scott Murphy, had had some success with this experiment.

[johnyandell]

Yes Nadal has a narrow platform, but I'm not sure he has as much push as Roddick. I got the term "Spanish Way" from a talk Luis Mediero did at the USPTA a couple of years ago. He is the head of the Spanish equivalent of USPTA.

The Spanish players don't all serve alike but most of them start open with the front foot at about a 45 degree angle to the baseline. (Look at Moya for example.)

[lukman41985]

Saw Blake play on TV and he stands pretty open too, though that's not so much the case in his stroke archive clips.

[crvw]

Hmmm...Tanner looks a lot like Tilden

I am coming very late to this discussion (dissection/controversy/therapy), but just a couple observations:

1. I notice that Bill Tilden's ball toss is also "low" and that he hits the ball right at the apex, just like Tanner. (Pardon me if this was mentioned earlier and I missed it.)

2. I personally have used the Sampras model and the Tanner model at different times over my 20+ year tennis career. I have had zero injuries resulting from either technique. The Sampras model seems more consistent, offers better disquise, and seems to generate more kick on my second serve. The Tanner model absolutely generates more pace-- about 10mph for me. (I have verified this empirically with a radar gun many times.) The pace can also be translated into spin, but I perceive the margin of error for a clean hit is narrower than in the Sampras model. (But when I saw Tanner in person, my impression was that he did indeed create a huge amount of spin on his second serve.) The Tanner model is also more tiring over a long match.

3. I agree with what others have posted-- Tanner was the most impressive server I have seen, including the modern bombers.

Just my 2 cents.

Charles
Atlanta, GA

[arnz]

Who is this guy? I cant find any clips on him on the internet, anybody have videos of him playing an actual match? I like this serve motion a lot for some reason. I think it would be fun to try it out, anyone have any advice to me before I try to emulate it? Quick delivery, great pace, I like it.

Most search results on him I got relate to his criminal history...lol

[gzhpcu]

Here I am calling an old thread back to life....

I came across this Vic Braden - Roscoe Tanner video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42STJ...eature=related

Vic is saying you get more power if you are not in the air on impact with the serve.

John? Brian?

[stotty]

I know a coach who teaches all his students to hit the ball at the apex because he does. He teaches it with skill and many of his students master the low toss well. It cuts out a lot of the common errors by "sheer speed of execution" i.e. dropped elbow, kinks...problems like this are less likely to happen because there simply isn't time for them!

I would say around 75% of his students execute an excellent serve like this. Maybe the reason more pros don't serve like this is because coaches don't teach the hit-at-the-apex serve....mainly because they don't know how to teach it. This could be a key issue in the matter!

I am not saying a low toss is necessarily better than a higher one but there is one thing I have notice about the students of the afore mentioned coach who all hit at the apex. They serve plenty of aces. The low ball toss makes it harder for the returner to pick where it's going.

[johnyandell]

Uh, I doubt it. If that was true think at lot of today's players would have figured that out--just like they do everything else...

[stotty]

I feel there are pros and cons of a high versus low toss. My toss is high-ish which I feel allows time for micro adjusments in the action (after all, no one throws the ball in precisely the same place every time). The extreme low toss allows little or no chance to make micro adjustments, so it can have real off days, certainly for amateur players.

It's funny, too, the "players innovate, coaches follow" theory. It suggests coaches have held players back for large chunks of history, sticking to tried and trusted coaching methods and boxing students in them. I remember being taught a closed stance religiously when I was a kid in the 70s...took me ages to unlearn it in my twenties!

[uspta990770809]

A little different view- Part 1 of 2

I think, as has been pointed out here, few people really understand how to hit the serve at the top of the toss. (As the first video and the circle clearly show, Roscoe did not hit the ball on the way up.) I understand Brody's argument about additional topspin for free from the higher toss, and it certainly has to be considered, but there also is a trade off in the degree of difficulty in hitting a falling ball as opposed to one that is standing still. In the extreme, would you rather have a lot of time and hit a really high lob before it bounces (which you usually should do so your opponent can't get back in position) or would you rather hit a somewhat lower lob that still allows you to get full extension and position (personally, I liked going up for the offensive lobs when I could still jump, but no, I'm not talking about aggressive topspin, ...just old-fashioned flat to underspin offensive lobs).

Consider for a second, how much time we are actually talking about

In a tenth of a second a ball drops
{(.1sec x 32 fps/s [terminal velocity at .1sec] +0[initial velocity])/2} x (.1sec) = .16 ft = 1.92 inches.

In two tenths of a second, it's .604 ft = 7.25 inches and now moving over 6 fps.

In three tenths of a second, it's 1.44 ft = 17.28 inches and now moving over 9.6 fps which is approximately 6.5 mph. That's not very fast, unless you compare it to 3.2 fps at the end of one-tenth of a second after the ball begins to drop. Remember, Brian and John's recent articles that showed how much happens in the last tenth of a second before impact. Also, the sweet spot allows a margin of error of a couple of inches, and the ball is in a two inch area for two-tenths of a second (two inches up and two inches down).

Excuse me. I went to Harvey Mudd and I kind of like numbers. Up to a point.

So back to how to hit the ball at the top of the toss. I had a pretty good serve in college and the early 70's with a toss that dropped a few inches before I hit the ball...certainly less than a foot. I also had a pretty big "bow" and that was putting some strain on my back so I decided to shorten things up a little bit and try to catch the ball right at the top. It's a difficult rhythm to learn, but there is a legitimate rationale that if everything has to fit together just right, it will hold together better under pressure (i.e. BMW parts had much smaller tolerances and variabilities than American parts in the old days...I hope that's not true anymore). And I know I did actually hit it at the top of the toss because I had a portable video camera and recording system that did slow motion in the mid-70's (wish I still had the camera or at least a couple of the tapes, but I traded the system to Hopman for a couple of more weeks at his camp in Largo in 1978). I would go out on a court at the River Club in Hastings-on-Hudson and set up the camera and practice and review to be sure I was catching the ball right at the top. And I did! Not sure how much it helped me though. But I thought there was an advantage to catching the ball early.

As someone else pointed out in the thread, it is harder to see where the serve is going. Receivers are used to seeing the ball go up, settle and begin to drop and then be hit. That gives them a moment to focus on the ball and the cue for the eye to focus is generally the ball stopping and reversing direction as it drops. Hitting the ball at the top of the toss deprives the receiver's eyes of this moment to focus and it's a kind of "hey, where did the ball go". That's also why it's so important to get your players to focus on the ball as it leaves the server's tossing hand so that their eyes will subconsciously pick up what's going on in the background as the racket approaches the ball. It is not a question of trying to watch the racket and then switching your eye to the ball at the last minute - too tough! You might try that on ground strokes, but I think good players do that with their peripheral vision as they watch the ball. (This is what real anticipation is about; putting your body in a position to be a slave to your eyes and being able to react to your eye's commands as soon as possible...not guessing.)

So back to how you hit this thing. In the 60's and 70's, there was a kind of standard mantra of hands down and up together and while there certainly were exceptions, most good players followed this dictum. You had models like Stan Smith and John Newcombe. The real differences we were concerned with was whether the palm should turn and face outward as it swung back like Smith or if it should stay facing your body like Newcombe. I think we have learned since then that it is better to keep the palm facing the body like Newcombe because it loads the shoulder a little better (I think it helps you get further into early external rotation). If you look in the stroke archives at the Legends and Modern Legends, you see mostly hands down and up together. Granted, Budge is a little bit of the modern staggered rhythm, but he was the exception. Even McEnroe and Lendl were basically down and up together. McEnroe changed the whole dynamic by changing the direction he was swinging the racket, but he didn't let the ball drop much more than a foot, if that. Lendl, who would be considered unremarkable in this respect today, was considered to have a very high toss for a player of his caliber.(I know I'm in dangerous territory here and John videotaped these guys so I hope I'm not too far wrong, but I'm sure John will correct me if I am.) If Doug Eng ran his rhythm checks on a representative sample of tour pros in 1975, much less 1965, I think he would find a much more homogenous rhythm pattern than what we find today. And I think he would also find a lot more rocking front to back to front like Smith, Newcombe, Connors and far less just front to back like Laver.

So the hands go down and up together, and as you release the ball the racket is reaching the "trophy" position with the racket head pointing up. (And in Tanner's case, the backswing is somewhat abbreviated as he lifts the racket rather than letting it swing straight back.) Then as the ball continues to rise to the top of the toss, the racket dropped behind the back and into the "pro drop" position. The ball would then sit in that position at your full extension, plus or minus about 2 inches, for about a tenth of a second (two-tenths if you count the last two inches as the ball approaches its' apex), and we know from Brian Gordon's work that it takes just a tenth of a second for that last move up to the ball. At that time (60's, 70's) it was not uncommon for players to let the racket move back under the influence of gravity (something I still advocate strongly today) which meant that the racket slowed down a little as the ball was leaving the server's hand and then picking up speed again as it dropped down to the "pro drop" and went up to the ball. At some point, I realized that what Roscoe was doing was not so much that he was accelerating the racket with great force before the final move up to the ball; he was just never letting the racket head slow down at all once it started on its' upward path from the bottom of the backswing. If you looked at Smith's serve, you could see a fast-easy-fast kind of a rhythm. The racket head never actually stopped, but it almost looked like it did if you just watched his hand or arm because he was waiting for the racket to fall easily into the "pro drop" and then he turned on the acceleration again. Roscoe, instead, maintained the racket head speed that he had at the bottom of the backswing and never allowed the racket head to slow down at all. And when he swung the racket up in a slightly abbreviated backswing, he didn't generate a lot of racket head momentum perpendicular to the plane in which he was trying to swing the racket to the target, although he might have gotten a little extra external rotation; still he got the racket moving in the correct plane up to the ball early enough to have a good "pro drop". Once you understood how to do that, you could reproduce the early hit at the top of the toss without forcing yourself and spraining your shoulder in the process or losing all control. But a lot of people got very frustrated trying to emulate what Roscoe was doing because they were trying to catch up to the ball too late in the motion.

[uspta990770809]

A little different view- Part 2 of 2

The beauty of Tanner's serve was that he could do it so easily. Other people trying it didn't understand how he didn't ruin his arm. He DOES use his legs a great deal. Take a good look at the 2nd video about 13 or 14 left arrow clicks back from contact with the ball and check the angle of his knees. We can't see the right knee clearly, but it is almost the same as the left which is clearly bent somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees, perhaps even a little more. I didn't put a protractor on it. (Phil?) In fact, his knee bend is timed perfectly to increase the "pro drop" and benefit from the stretch reflex at the shoulder joint and we know this is one of the primary benefits of the leg action - pulling that slingshot back a little further.

Then, if you go back to the first video and look at the "pro drop" position in the slow motion view (which the regular speed of video number two does not capture), you will see that Roscoe's "pro drop" is pretty deep indeed. No it is not as deep as Sampras, but the tip of the racket head is down by the bottom of his pants (admittedly shorter ...I couldn't bring myself to wear the Fila shorts at the time...the Tachinni's Jesse [???last name-distributor in NY] gave me to wear down to the Missouri Valley Circuit were bad enough, and then trying to get someone in Oklahoma City in 1978 to spring for $40 or $50 for a shirt or a pair of shorts...memories). Also, the last two videos are a significantly older Roscoe and he doesn't even have the flexibility he demonstrates in the first video which is probably also after he turned 30.

As for the hip turn being less than the amplitude of the big hip turns of today's servers, you have to realize that the currency of note here is racket head speed. Someone who turns the hips a lesser distance (less than 90 degrees as opposed to what might seem quite a bit more than 90 for some of today's servers) can still be generating a lot more speed if the hip turn is taking place in a much smaller amount of time, and I think it you take a good look at Tanner vs some of the server's you are comparing him to, he takes significantly less time to make the turn. The big motion may develop a bigger leap into the air, but I doubt it comes close to the hip speed Roscoe is demonstrating in even the video in which he is well past his prime. Take a look at the information on hip speed on the Somax Performance site. We had a reference in a recent thread to Roddick's serve breakdown there. It's really pretty interesting. Go about 3 min 15 seconds in to get to the part about hip speed. Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLf_M...eature=related

My conclusion is Roscoe had a tremendous hip turn. You are really missing the big picture when you say he was just serving with his arm. Let's say he is going just 75 degrees, but in half the time of the guy going 110 degrees; his speed is the equivalent of 150 degrees. I doubt if the difference was that much, but when you consider what Pritchard at Somax is saying, that difference in hip speed is multiplied 16 times as it is converted into racket head speed. That's a lot.

As for the difficulty of holding this serve together, Stotty, it's very hard to learn this rhythm. Some people just can't get close to it and shouldn't make much of an effort to try. But if you can do it and learn it well, the timing forces you to stay aggressive. You have to think of it a little like a Ferrari. If you keep that Ferrari tuned up and in good shape, it should always beat the BMW. But if you have to make a cross country drive, much less drive the car for years, the BMW will zoom ahead as the Ferrari spends so much time in the shop. The rhythm of getting to the ball early forces you to toss correctly, but imagine shooting a basket from 2 1/2 feet from the basket. The toss that has to drop 2 1/2 feet has to travel another 5 feet from when it leaves the tosser's hand before the ball is hit. If the toss is 2.5 feet to the contact point, Tanner is only tossing the ball 1/3 the distance of the person who tosses it up and lets it drop. They are shooting from 7 1/2 feet from the basket. Ever thought of it that way?!

I have a theory about the toss and rhythm that we will talk about another time, but I think with the right rock based on gravity, you can make this motion more like the BMW. The way Roscoe lifts the racket instead of letting it swing means it requires a lot of practice to keep it sharp. I don't try to teach this early a hit, but I do try to get my players to hit the ball within a few (4-6) inches of the top of the toss. I said I try. Everyone has to find a rhythm that works for them. To me, the lynchpin that holds everything together is the rock, whether it is back to front like Sampras or front to back to front like Agassi and my favorite pro serve, Michael Stich. Every once in a while I'll get someone who just comes together better catching it right at the top. Then I'm quite insistent that they not rush the backswing, simply not let it slow down. Below is a link to my own service motion 25 years ago when it was already 10 years past its' prime. I give the clip with just the service motion to students to play on QuickTime Pro in the "loop" mode so they can get a sense of the rhythm. You can almost get that feeling by hitting the play button again just as the clip ends on Youtube. And take it easy on me. I was already almost 38 years old, I was the Tournament Director for the event, AND we had to get out of the water and off the jetskis just before the match (I won the "Grand Prix" prize in the tournament for finishing second in the jetski competition and reaching the semis of the tennis tournament which we lost 7-6, 7-6, 7-6 (not a misprint).

Here are the links for my serve:

the full point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv6cdI6-QtY

just the serve:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmoqsgiag3g

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
don

Phil, do you celebrate your early years in the States with a little turkey and pumpkin pie today?

[gzhpcu]

Hi Don,
Yes had pumpkin pie today! My wife is a great cook!

Very nice classical service Don. Like it. Classical cross over step like Becker and Noah.

Nice comments on Roscoe Tanner serve. Interesting about the hip rotation. In any case, he was certainly doing something right. I remember reading an article on his serve in Tennis magazine back then, saying that with his fast, concerted movement and low toss, at times he would not hit the ball at full height, but be a bit cramped.

Saw him playing in Wimbledon years back. He was one of the lesser courts. I was very close to him and tremendously impressed with his exposive delivery.

[gzhpcu]

Thing is, in the video, Vic Braden tells Roscoe that he gets so much power, because he keeps his right foot on the ground at impact!