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I noticed his toss is not so much over the head, but more to the left. Great slice serve.
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Excellent video illustrating the lefty serve of Gilles Mueller. With commentary...extremely important.
What is power I ask the student? Control is power. What is control? There are three basic elements to control...speed, spin and placement. Gilles acknowledges that his is not the fastest serve in the game but he maintains he doesn't need to be. Why? Because number one...he is left handed. So true. This is why Denis Shapovalov is going to be a force not to far down the line here. One of the reasons. But number two...Gilles stresses it is the spin and the placement that make him so effective. This is absolutely correct and is the same paradigm that Roger Federer serves in.
He makes a comment that sort of slips in under the radar...but he says that by staying "loose" as in relaxed and fluid he is able to hit his targets. What a great serving performance he put on yesterday...facing down Rafael Nadal in a shootout in the fifth set. The first who blinks loses. He was winning his serve so easily for the most part and when he got in trouble he was able to serve his way out of it. Shades of Richard Gonzales. Intelligent serving. Tactical serving. He really worked over Nadal in the ad side by sending him meters off of the court. He intelligently mixed this in with the heat seeking missile into the body on the backhand side.
His slicing on the deuce side couple with his ability to hit flatter into the corner and again into the body on the backhand side served Gilles well right until the very end. I don't care for the footwork at all with the pinpoint and I wonder how much better he would have been with a platform...but the path of the racquet is silky smooth and the serve really held up under the pressure. Which was immense for him to be in such a match at this point in his career.
The rest of the Mueller game was just as interesting too. The groundstrokes, volleys and approach game made him a very tough opponent to handle on the grass court at Wimbledon. Interesting technique coming in a mirror image...from the southpaw side. He wasn't afraid to come to the net that's for sure and predictable Nadal made him pay at times. But such is the life of aggressive tactics...you will get burned. As klacr repeatedly points out in his articles and commentary...you shall not be daunted by the occasional pass. You must keep the pressure on the opponent. -
I notice he has a high elbow...highest I've seen on a tour player. I would have liked more explanation of the wrist action he was referring to.
He served great against Nadal and completely muzzled him. It effected the rest of Nadal's game it seemed to me. Nadal missed countless forehands just from watching from 9-9 in the fifth, where I started watching the match. I wonder if Muller's serving had a dismantling effect in some way.StottyComment
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He's a tour player, not a tennis coach. Other than vague terms like "stay loose" or "keep tossing arm up" I don't think he can explain how he exactly does it, he just knows how it feels to him and executes it.
Nice of him to do the video for the ATP but would help if he actually took us through motion step by step: Grip, stance etc etc all the way through contact.
Kyle LaCroix USPTA
Boca Raton
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Exactly! He knows how it feels. That is probably the art in good coaching. Getting the player to do things and eventually put them together to the best of their ability. Based on Müller, Lopez, Fed, Sampras it is clear that smooth and loose is better.
Hitches develop because the fluidity is lost when coaches use words like harder.
Of course developing all the particular parts and putting them together is the complicated part.
And some people are just more natural throwers than others.Comment
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Well, his comments are more than Goran Ivanisevic's, who when asked about how he serves, replied "I toss the ball up and hit it...".
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Is it only me, or is his toss, less over his head, but more to the side?Comment
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Here's an interesting video to mull over regarding the toss of Gilles Muller...21 years old against a 34 year old Andre Agassi. You can almost hear his knees creaking...speaking of aging knees. Agassi also using a racquet that is 108 square inches to help him in his old age. Roger Federer found that an extra 8 square inches can make all the difference in the world. It's just simple math...area and the permutation, combinations. The possibilities of hitting the ball with the sweet spot.Originally posted by gzhpcu View Post
From the video that you posted...not certain if you are reading me. But here goes anyways.
JG: What makes your serve so effective?
GM: I think now that there are not so many lefties left in the top 100 so it not easy for the other guys to play a lefty...on the ad side at 40-30 or advantage. So I have an advantage in that moment. I worked very hard on my toss to not give any information to my opponent...so I try to have the same toss no matter where I go. I think these things are very important.
JG: What is it about the toss in particular that helps to hide your intention and the direction of your serve?
GM: I focus very hard to keep my right arm up all the time...to reach for and have a good height. To always go over the net. I think that is very important. Extension...but the best thing is to pass the net so you have the best chance to win a point.
JG: So many are focused on the pace of the serve...you are focused on disguise, accuracy and spin.
GM: I’m not really focused on the speed. Obviously it’s nice when you see the radar and it’s 220...but it’s not really helping my serve. I have to be loose to hit the right spots in the right zones. So the speed is not the best one but I think it’s not that important but if you hit the right zones with the right spins I think it’s more than enough.
JG: I faced your serve and it seems you have excellent shoulder turn and weight transfer going into the shot getting a lot of energy from the ground with your legs.
GM: When I start the serve I almost facing the net with my back. So I am really using a lot of rotation...it gives me an extra edge on the spin, the speed as well. It really helps me to hide from my opponent.
JG: How important is that wrist motion?
GM: It’s very important. You notice the I am almost never hitting any flat serves...it’s always a little bit with spin, slice or something and it only doable because I do that wrist motion at the end. Without that I think a lot of people are a bit stiff in the wrist and it doesn’t give them the spin.
Very interesting comments. I think this fellow is very qualified to discuss his serve in detail. Justin certainly leads him into some revealing comments.
But he is tossing more to his left than you might see most servers. But then again most servers are right handed. Muller intelligently is focused on slicing the ball more of the time as this is the spin that will knock the right hander off balance. He speaks of spin and placement. He speaks of tossing to the same spot and hitting all of his serves from the same spot...for deception. To now give the opponent an inkling of where it is going. This is very effective stuff. He obviously is a very tactical server as opposed to a fanatical power server. He and Federer are from the same school of thought as far as serving tactics go. The Stan Smith School of Serving Tactics.
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It seems that Sampras also preferred spin to speed. He could have hit a flatter serve that was faster but actually preferred a heavier serve. The bigger racket does help. Federer is now playing evenly with the others instead of giving up 8-10 square inches. I am glad he made the switch but I really wonder if it should have happened earlier. 2011 seems like a good point when he was still making finals but other players were pushing him around.Comment
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