Head Position in Pro Tennis
The Serve

John Yandell


Head looking forward toward opponent—the exception?

We've looked at the controversy over the variety of head positions at contact on the forehand (Click Here) and the backhands (Click Here). Now let's look at head position at contact on the serve.

Surely that is not as varied—and controversial. Right?

The commonly held view is that the server should keep his head up looking at the ball at contact. And our amazing high frame rate video allow us to test this empirically.

10 Players

I thought this article would be more straightforward, maybe even boring. But I decided to look at serve video of 10 great servers, past and present. I was very surprised though what the video actually showed.

The 10 players
Pete SamprasAlexander Zverev
Roger FedererDaniil Medvedev
Andy RoddickJannick Sinner
Milos RaonicStefano Tsitsipas
John IsnerGiovanni Mpetshi Perricard

I knew from my previous study of Roddick's motion that he was at least one exception to the head up look at the ball mantra. With him it was pretty obvious because his head appeared to be looking directly ahead at contact.

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John Yandell is widely acknowledged as one of the leading videographers and students of the modern game of professional tennis. His high speed filming for Advanced Tennis and Tennisplayer have provided new visual resources that have changed the way the game is studied and understood by both players and coaches. He has done personal video analysis for hundreds of high level competitive players, including Justine Henin-Hardenne, Taylor Dent and John McEnroe, among others.

In addition to his role as Editor of Tennisplayer he is the author of the critically acclaimed book Visual Tennis. The John Yandell Tennis School is located in San Francisco, California.


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