Tennis Serve And Pronation

Hi Tomaz,

After watching your service video, I still can not completely understand it.

Here are my questions: In the video, first we should hit racket from low to high, left to right(parallel to net), to give the ball a top spin so ball can land on the other side’s court.

Then, when the racket reach the highest point, we do pronation to have racket hit ball at an angle to the net.

I followed your instruction and practiced pronation, but I always fell awkward and not natural. I feel that I first move racket parallel to net direction, then by doing pronation, I have to change the direction of my racket movement(at an angle to the net). Just like you are driving car on straight line, when you reach highest speed, you make left turn.

Not only you are slowing down, also you are not using your highest power. Is this right? Am I missing something? Can you draw a graph or explain more clearly about the correct racket movement?

Interesting question, because I had a discussion with one of my students just this week. Here are some ideas:
1. You may be trying to DO the pronation too early in the swing. Try this: guide your racquet (no ball) forward with the edge. When your arm reaches paralel position to the ground, it’s going to feel a little strange in your wrist. It’s not pain yet but it’s uncomfortable. If you then pronate, you’ll feel that it’s much better.

While it’s not exactly like that with the real tennis serve, you first need ( when you are learning ) to let go a little bit and NOT force the pronation. Just brush the ball with the slice serve and relax your arm. You will see that the pronation will eventually happen by itself.

2. The pronation is awkward movement – there is no doubt about it. If I try to pronate with my left arm, I have no feel for it and my wrist and forearm are too weak to add any kind of power. That’s how a tennis beginner feels.

So it takes many repetitions to build some muscle power in the forearm and to coordinate the pronation and the right time to really add power to the serve.

See how I can add power with pronation in this video:

3. Once you feel the pronation, you’ll be able to pronate earlier (and change direction of your movement!) but you also feel the power that comes from that. You’ll use early pronation for the flat serve and slighly “late” pronation for the slice and top spin serve.

Check the video analysis of Pete Sampras’ serve and notice how he pronates and when.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 10:42 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 “Tennis Serve And Pronation”

  1. James Song Says:
    October 15th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    From both videos, I can see the pronation to allow racket face hitting the ball. But when does racket brush the ball to give the ball the top spin?

  2. Tomaz Says:
    October 16th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Hi James,

    Both videos show a flat serve. In case of a top spin serve the racquet remains positioned sideways relative to the ball a little longer and then pronates.

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