Serve motion like throwing a ball? Watch Serena throw a ball.

[Error]

I never understood this analogy. I dont see even a remote link between serving a a tennis ball and throwing a baseball or football etc. When I serve I dont feel like I'm throwing the racket at the ball. I think this idea is one of many that just seem to get repeated over and over but isn't based on any real world evidence.

At any rate if it's true that the serve is like the throwing motion someone forgot to tell the best women server of all time.

https://youtu.be/NQ_t3HcSSWM

[gzhpcu]

If anything, it is throwing the ball up, not forward which might make sense.

[nytennisaddict]

lol, she threw it like she was hitting a topslice serve,... up and out :P
i also think there's are control nuances in throwing baseball a set distance... if you're not practiced at throwing a flat trajectory (fast!) to the target.
when i'm serving, i do feel like i'm throwing the racquet at the ball, but i'm also getting control by swinging as hard as i can keep the racquet path true to contact (eg. for spin)

also, she's throwing in front of thousands of people! i can see myself messing up this throw (despite having played quite a bit of little league baseball, men's softball, stick ball, etc...)

[jeffreycounts]

I watched a documentary on Venus and Serena. Their Dad had them throwing rackets over a fence for hours to get the motion of the serve. So throwing upward, yes. Also in Nick Bollitieri's sonic serve there is a whole segment showing how an upward throwing motion mimics a serve.

[nytennisaddict]

I watched a documentary on Venus and Serena. Their Dad had them throwing rackets over a fence for hours to get the motion of the serve. So throwing upward, yes. Also in Nick Bollitieri's sonic serve there is a whole segment showing how an upward throwing motion mimics a serve.

hehe, i just had a student do that yesterday, with one of my old racquets...
also did the 2 ball drill (eg. toss a ball, then throw the ball at the ball i tossed)
also throw around a junior football quite a bit.

[johnyandell]

Macci said Sharapova could throw a football 40 yards. No doubt the arm rotations are similar to throwing in the upward motion. But the release point of a throw and contact point on a serve are very different. Here is an article I did on the disimlarities between a serve and a baseball pitch:

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members/avancedtennis/john_yandell/the_myth/the_myth_of_the_pitch_pg2_images/the_myth_of_the_pitch_pg2.html

[nytennisaddict]

Macci said Sharapova could throw a football 40 yards. No doubt the arm rotations are similar to throwing in the upward motion. But the release point of a throw and contact point on a serve are very different. Here is an article I did on the disimlarities between a serve and a baseball pitch:

https://www.tennisplayer.net/members...pitch_pg2.html

great article as usual, thx... i particularly like how it shows the specific differences...
but i still feel there are enough similarlities to throwing (specifically directly upward), that i think it's still valueable to do the 2 ball drill, or throwing the racquet, etc...
i think the main motion that i'm trying to instill in beginners, are folks (who don't have alot of experience in throwing from other sports, who do a pushing type motion (like throwing darts because they are trying to be precise)...
for folks that already have decent rotational mechanices of throwing football or baseball, yeah, i just focus on serve specific mechanics.
my $0.02.

[Error]

I watched a documentary on Venus and Serena. Their Dad had them throwing rackets over a fence for hours to get the motion of the serve..

For hours? Standing there chucking rackets for hours? And she still cant throw a ball? .

"So throwing upward, yes.

But she did throw it upwards.

Also in Nick Bollitieri's sonic serve there is a whole segment showing how an upward throwing motion mimics a serve.

There are lots of people who promote this idea. It may mimic a serve but we just saw Serena throw a ball, pretty clear evidence that there is no correlation between the ability to serve and the ability to throw a ball.. in any direction, up down or sideways but feel free to toss rackets over the fence "for hours".

I'm actually all for it if it helps someone, I just dont like when people claim they are the same thing and lots of people say that.

[johnyandell]

I agree throwing rackets over back fence is good.

[don_budge]

There is no question that there are some similarities but it isn't the exact same motion. In one motion you are actually throwing and the other is using an instrument to strike something. But in all athletics there are some similarities. You will never see a baseball pitcher or a quarterback throwing from a pinpoint stance...for example.

But consider my own story. When I first started to play tennis I would switch the racquet in my hands for to hit forehands. I had played baseball and basketball for the most part and I threw right handed and was definitely stronger going to my right and shooting with my right. But one day when I started to learn how to play tennis my tennis coach took me into the gym and told me to serve against the wall and for some reason I was inclined to serve left handed.

I ended up with a perfect service motion and I could dominate matches with my serve. There were days when it was just unreturnable. But as I mentioned I was a right handed baseball pitcher. To this day I cannot say that I can throw a ball left handed or serve right handed. I would bet that if I worked at it I could thought.

That being said I found that in Sweden here none of the kids really had much experience in throwing balls as for the most part they play football. They were missing something in their athletic repertoire that enabled them to easily learn the service motion.

An interesting thought...going off of thread...is that the sidearm throwing motion looks like it has some similarities to the forehand motion. It also has some similarities to the motion of the right hand in the golf swing. In the case of the golf swing one drill is to throw a golf ball down at the point where you hope to make contact with it. Interesting how johnyandell and the rest advocate throwing upwards. My contention all along is that there are some similarities between the golf swing and the service motion. But instead of teeing the ball down on the ground we try to tee it up with our toss.

[glacierguy]

Three things which seemed to help my kids with the service action (starting from scratch):
- throwing mini-tennis rackets over the net
- standing up against back fence and having racket face meet fence at top of action (contact point)
- ball toss practice!!!

[glacierguy]

And I should add that they (the kids) thought throwing rackets was hilarious and naughty, and as always, having fun led to progress...

[nytennisaddict]

And I should add that they (the kids) thought throwing rackets was hilarious and naughty, and as always, having fun led to progress...

haha, i had an adult female student look at me incredulously when i asked her to throw my racquet over the fence... moving her closer to the fence after each throw. one of them almost landed in her pool, lol! she thought the experience was hilarious (ie. doing something she'd tell her kids not to do)

[nytennisaddict]

There is no question that there are some similarities but it isn't the exact same motion. In one motion you are actually throwing and the other is using an instrument to strike something. But in all athletics there are some similarities. You will never see a baseball pitcher or a quarterback throwing from a pinpoint stance...for example.

But consider my own story. When I first started to play tennis I would switch the racquet in my hands for to hit forehands. I had played baseball and basketball for the most part and I threw right handed and was definitely stronger going to my right and shooting with my right. But one day when I started to learn how to play tennis my tennis coach took me into the gym and told me to serve against the wall and for some reason I was inclined to serve left handed.

I ended up with a perfect service motion and I could dominate matches with my serve. There were days when it was just unreturnable. But as I mentioned I was a right handed baseball pitcher. To this day I cannot say that I can throw a ball left handed or serve right handed. I would bet that if I worked at it I could thought.

That being said I found that in Sweden here none of the kids really had much experience in throwing balls as for the most part they play football. They were missing something in their athletic repertoire that enabled them to easily learn the service motion.

An interesting thought...going off of thread...is that the sidearm throwing motion looks like it has some similarities to the forehand motion. It also has some similarities to the motion of the right hand in the golf swing. In the case of the golf swing one drill is to throw a golf ball down at the point where you hope to make contact with it. Interesting how johnyandell and the rest advocate throwing upwards. My contention all along is that there are some similarities between the golf swing and the service motion. But instead of teeing the ball down on the ground we try to tee it up with our toss.

interesting that you can serve lefty, but not righty (and vice versa with throwing a ball).
for me, i can serve lefty, but like at the low 3.5 level... can spin it in... but the left side of my body, from the ground up, is not as sync'd as well as my right side.

i wonder if your ability to "not" be able with your right side, is because you have such a highly developed throwing motion, that doing something else that's similar, but not quite the same, forces you into the "throwing" groove (ie. like swinging forward, vs. swinging up).

in mixed martial arts, for example, when learning a new but similar move... the body naturally gravitates to the "old" familiar movement (eg. a muy thai roundhouse kick is similar but not the same as the similar kick in tkd, savate, capoeira,...)... growing up with tkd, i found it very hard to break habits formed in tkd, to learn a muy thai kick.

[Error]

Throwing a racket over the fence seems as bizarre to me as a baseball player throwing his bat as some sort of drill to help him develop his swing. Are people really having that much trouble with the concept of swinging a racket at a ball? Maybe they are. I dont know.

At any rate the topic addressed the notion that there is a correlation and that women dont serve as well as men because they've never learned how to throw a ball (a theory I've heard countless times) and not because they are 22% smaller than men on average and just happen to serve about 22% slower than men.