A Top Spin Tennis Serve And Pronation

Your “topspin serve” material interested me. But it left an unanswered question: does one pronate the wrist as part of this serve?

Your video suggests “yes”. But the easy way to brush up on the ball involves either no pronation or actual suplimation (turning your wrist out rather than in).

I would answer this in 2 ways.

First, if I was teaching someone, I wouldn’t mention pronation at any time (unless someone really wouldn’t “get it” after continuous practice).

Your goal is to brush up the ball as demonstrated and explained. And then do it better! ;)

Hit the the ball faster while still “spinning” it. Everything else comes automatically. Not the first minute of course but with practice.

The exact moment when pronation occurs and how much of it are impossible to control consciously.

The players sees that if he just brushes up the ball without pronating (although he is not aware what that is!), the ball probably won’t even cross the net.

So the racquet face cannot be really totally paralel to the ball surface and just brush it up. It has to somewhat hit the ball directly too.

How much? I don’t know. Even if I did, my explanation wouldn’t help the student. He cannot control that in those miliseconds when the contact happens.

But he can practice, observe the result and adjust.

If you do this for a few days or weeks, you will find the right amount of spin + pronation that will give you good results. And if you do this for years, you will master it.

Secondly, if I were to analyze the pronation happening with top spin serve (perhaps for some biomechanics study), then the pronation happens slightly before the contact (the reason explained above) and then completes after the contact.

In case of a flat serve, there is more pronation before the contact so that the string bed in almost perpendicular to the ball

Observe carefully the pronation demonstrated in the video below…
Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Furl
  • MisterWong
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • YahooMyWeb



This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 1:29 am and is filed under Tennis Instruction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


2 Responses to “A Top Spin Tennis Serve And Pronation”

  1. Ab Hilo Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 9:07 am

    Coach,
    About pronation…..I believe it happens after you complete the bruhup on the ball ie; you lead with the front edge of the racquet and you throw it (the edge)over the pinky finger then the pronation will happen naturaly…tha’ts my experience with it and it works…..thanks for all you do for tennis . Ab :)

  2. Tomaz Says:
    March 21st, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    Hi Ab,

    Well, it comes down the the definition of pronation. It means that your arm is turning on the inside.

    If there wasn’t ANY pronation when hitting a top spin serve, one would just brush the ball on the back and the ball wouldn’t even cross the net.

    The racquet has to open slightly to hit and brush at the same time to give the ball pace and spin.

Leave a Reply