Your Strokes:
Gavin Serve

John Yandell

Gavin: abbreviated motion, but even at age 10 a strong, flexible shoulder and a great swing shape.

It never ceases to amaze me the variety of technical elements players have in their strokes when they come to my court for video analysis. The challenge after analyzing the video is what elements to try to change, and especially in what order.

Last summer I had a chance to work with Barry Gilbert's two sons, Drew who is 15 and Gavin who is 10. Barry is Brad's older brother and an old friend. Both kids are talented and are having tournament success! And I enjoyed working with them.

In September we looked at Drew's forehand. (Click Here.) This month let's look at Gavin's serve.

Gavin had a narrow platform stance. He also had an abbreviate windup. In addition he had a pretty extreme serve grip with his hand rotated toward the top of the handle.

None of those are necessarily ideal. But his serve had a couple of tremendous other elements that were literally pro level—amazing for age 10.

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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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