Serve

[denis]

Hi John,

I have some qustions for you about my serve and Richard Krajicek serve. Does he start his service motion with his legs, transfering his weight to his back foot and then from that point start to move his arms and shoulders, or he move his arms and shoulders first. When I compare Max Mirny and Krajicek serve, I think I'm seeing that Max starting his service from the back foot and then moving forward, while Krajicek is leaned on his front foot moving to his back foot and then again on the front foot. Does both of them starting the toss when their weight is shifted to the front foot? I'm trying to emulate some things from his motion and I would like your opinion about that. My problem is that I'm not sure how much weight transfering on back foot is enough. I have some problems with ball toss also, it seems I start my toss when I am on my back foot and don't toss ball enough forward, when I transfer weight forward ball is straight above my head and you know I can't hit it properly. I noticed that when I'm playing points, often I'm in a hurry when I'm on my serve and I bend my elbow when releasing the ball and that causing me a bad toss (ball is not enough forward and is too much on my left) What should I try to do to avoid bending my elbow? I'm trying to do the toss from the shoulder with straight arm and even tryed to fixed my elbow with some straps to prevent the bending.

Denis

[johnyandell]

It would be much easier to have an opinion if we had video of your motion.

Having said that, I wouldn't torture yourself about where the weight goes exactly when at the start of the motion.

Advance either player about 40 frames (maybe 35 for Richard) and look at the similarities in the positions.

The weight needs to be forward in the trophy position and there a lot of ways of getting there. The timing is probably relatively unimportant or you wouldn't see so many great servers do it so differently. Personally I think Sampras or Federer are much simpler.

Regarding your tossing arm: Find the feeling of full extension when you are really reaching up as high as you can.

Don't take this the wrong way, but you have to have courage to venture into the unknown and make some horrible tosses to change something like that.

The answer is mental not a device.