Regarding Brooksby's serve, maybe they couldn't work on it because of his wrist surgery. Or are scared to touch it now until he gets back to a safer ranking... Getting into a player's serve demands some cold nerves from a coach! Yet when you see how Nadal and Djokovic worked on that shot through the years, you know it's rewarding.
Yeah I think it's the exact same injury I did to my wrist (never got the srugery and my wrist tendon still flicks out if I move the hand toward the pinky side). I think the recovery on that is 2-3 months ish anyway. And I believe his first surgeries were before the ban?
This seems possible. But it's also in line with how positive feedback loops can be limiting. More than likely, Brooksby won a lot as a young junior and it would have taken time away from competing to advance the serve motion. It's one thing if you're losing a lot, but when you're winning you don't want to step away from tournaments.
I had a chat with Italian coach Riccardo Piatti recently, and he told me what he'd say to his young players: I do not care about your results right now; now is not the time for results; it's the time for building your game.
Yet, it's become tougher and tougher these days because so much is at stake much earlier, I feel... And even the younger pro, you'd have to fight them to get them give up on some tournaments in order to get a training block... Depends on, also, how much money they have to focus on building the game instead of already needing to get the prize money.
Hugh I love your work and generally agree with everything you write (not that my opinion matters as just a lowly passionate rec player), but I think you're focusing on the wrong thing regarding Brooksby's serve. It's like when coaches have told me to increase the depth of my jump into court to improve my serve but without addressing underlying serve motion issues. I took a lot of slow mo video at IW this year from 1st or 2nd rows and believe me when I say that Brooksby's issue is the serve motion itself. It's noticeably shallower in the drop and he doesn't get into a good supinated position; his racket starts coming up to the ball before it swings out to align with his body. I could share images/vids with you if you'd like. Lemme know if you'd me to do so.
100% agree. That's why I phrased it as "you can get a hint of how explosive the kinetic chain was based on the leg finish". My honest answer is that technically Brooksby's full serve doesn't look terrible or obviously flawed to me, he just seems to not generate much power, and the finish was the thing that caught my eye. He almost has a similar motion to Rune in a sense. Little back/forward motion beforehand, platform stance.
Would love if you shared the pics! I'll try and dig a little deeper.
How new is the scorpion kick? The big servers of the 80s and 90s (eg Becker and Sampras) don’t seem to have done it, but Federer (2000s+) did.
Or is it a baseline v serve-volley thing - that if you’re heading in to the net you don’t want to slow your momentum (quite the opposite)? The Shelton example in the article suggests it’s the latter, but I don’t recall seeing such extreme kickbacks by baseliners in the 20th century - feel it would have been remarked on as A Thing if it had been.
I agree that there might be more to the story. I recall a study that platform stance servers had more forward momentum and pinpoint had more hang time. Platform enabled servers to rush the net faster. I believe Brooksby is the only platform server of the 4 servers depicted. He lands farther into the court and his torso is less upright. It almost looks like he's a sprinter coming out of the starting blocks. Ready to charge forward since his right leg doesn't have as far to go to take the next step. But he's not a net-rusher, is he?
This is an article that compares Sampras, Roddick, and Federer parameters: Time from ball strike to landing, landing depth into the court, forward body speed. It shows Sampras lands sooner, deeper, and with more forward body velocity- all things that should contribute to improved volley position.
Thanks for the link Colin, and amazing photos from Jim Fawcette. Good shout out regarding serve stance. It's interesting with Sinner as although he brings the back foot up now, there is still a considerable gap between his legs. Note the roddick leg kick with a platform is quite big:
Now I'm wondering if the back leg drive is the main contributor to the back leg kick.
The drive of the back hip is responsible for a huge amount of the power of a serve, and the guys who don't have that (Fritz/Tsitsipas/Brooksby) may have less back leg drive. TSitsipas for example, lets his right knee fold in, inhibiting drive from the back leg.
But then he has a great serve.
More questions than answers! Thanks for the comments and links mate
But, notably, looking only at Roddick in the first instance he has a big back leg kick but on the second of those 7 points he’s starting to follow in: his balance is on the front (left) foot and he pushes off it and the back foot comes through really quick.
IOW, the back leg kick isn’t related to serve-volley/baseline per se. I think it might be more about platform? Alcaraz is platform-y, to my eyes.
Also, Tsitsipas’s serve is painful to watch. So wrong! I wonder if in later years he will discover like Connors did that you can get more power by throwing the ball more to the side.
Yeah I don't think you will see this on serve and volley because the leg kick is to stop your forward momentum and help you get back behind the baseline. Makes sense that S&V guys wouldn't do it
I’ll probably stop at some point 😬 but I realised that Ivan Lendl did a scorpion kick back when he served. Classic baseliner. So it’s been around for a while!
Given that momentum is real in tennis, it seems natural that the technical ability to enable a purple patch could be real and hard to catch with traditional stats. I think that people don’t measure stats like this since the sample size is incredibly small. However, you could easily have a proxy for this via looking at something like through match or per set variance, which can separate between mid floor mid ceiling and low floor high ceiling players (on return, the latter is probably preferred, while the opposite seems true for serve).
It would be interesting to see how, e.g., Sampras did on such an assessment. He was (in)famous at the time for high variance return games, just looking to hit a good streak in one return game a set.
Yeah I know that Tennis Insights, for example, could give a range, or bell curve of a player's shot to note the variance and see what that looked like. Good shout.
On the scorpion kick, what are your thoughts on the toss arm flinging back at the end of the serve motion? I had learned to keep that arm tucked into the body in order to create a reactive break for the racquet to accelerate through the ball.
ATP data says so, and it would be if correct. Wouldn't doubt it coming from him. He hit 181kmh in Aus (112mph). Could be desert air with new balls luckily combining
I haven't managed to see any extended match footage of him, but some of the highlights I've seen look like he's hitting absolutely massively. But if he's hitting 120 at 18, I look forward to what he does when he matures...
Hopefully just more consistency! Traditionally the trend is to get more conservative/less error prone with age for the young baseliners (Nadal/Djokovic/Sinner tracked/tracking that way)
Will never understand how Brooksby was allowed to develop as a junior all the way to Baylor without addressing that serve motion. I mean, he's 6'4".
Regarding Brooksby's serve, maybe they couldn't work on it because of his wrist surgery. Or are scared to touch it now until he gets back to a safer ranking... Getting into a player's serve demands some cold nerves from a coach! Yet when you see how Nadal and Djokovic worked on that shot through the years, you know it's rewarding.
Yeah I think it's the exact same injury I did to my wrist (never got the srugery and my wrist tendon still flicks out if I move the hand toward the pinky side). I think the recovery on that is 2-3 months ish anyway. And I believe his first surgeries were before the ban?
https://www.atptour.com/en/news/brooksby-surgery-may-2023#:~:text=It%20is%20the%20same%20surgery,excited%20to%20come%20back%20better.&text=Brooksby's%20right%20wrist%20tendon%20was,the%20best%20position%20to%20succeed.%E2%80%9D
Also, check out the last paragraph of that. Maybe he did try
This seems possible. But it's also in line with how positive feedback loops can be limiting. More than likely, Brooksby won a lot as a young junior and it would have taken time away from competing to advance the serve motion. It's one thing if you're losing a lot, but when you're winning you don't want to step away from tournaments.
I had a chat with Italian coach Riccardo Piatti recently, and he told me what he'd say to his young players: I do not care about your results right now; now is not the time for results; it's the time for building your game.
Yet, it's become tougher and tougher these days because so much is at stake much earlier, I feel... And even the younger pro, you'd have to fight them to get them give up on some tournaments in order to get a training block... Depends on, also, how much money they have to focus on building the game instead of already needing to get the prize money.
Hugh I love your work and generally agree with everything you write (not that my opinion matters as just a lowly passionate rec player), but I think you're focusing on the wrong thing regarding Brooksby's serve. It's like when coaches have told me to increase the depth of my jump into court to improve my serve but without addressing underlying serve motion issues. I took a lot of slow mo video at IW this year from 1st or 2nd rows and believe me when I say that Brooksby's issue is the serve motion itself. It's noticeably shallower in the drop and he doesn't get into a good supinated position; his racket starts coming up to the ball before it swings out to align with his body. I could share images/vids with you if you'd like. Lemme know if you'd me to do so.
100% agree. That's why I phrased it as "you can get a hint of how explosive the kinetic chain was based on the leg finish". My honest answer is that technically Brooksby's full serve doesn't look terrible or obviously flawed to me, he just seems to not generate much power, and the finish was the thing that caught my eye. He almost has a similar motion to Rune in a sense. Little back/forward motion beforehand, platform stance.
Would love if you shared the pics! I'll try and dig a little deeper.
How new is the scorpion kick? The big servers of the 80s and 90s (eg Becker and Sampras) don’t seem to have done it, but Federer (2000s+) did.
Or is it a baseline v serve-volley thing - that if you’re heading in to the net you don’t want to slow your momentum (quite the opposite)? The Shelton example in the article suggests it’s the latter, but I don’t recall seeing such extreme kickbacks by baseliners in the 20th century - feel it would have been remarked on as A Thing if it had been.
I agree that there might be more to the story. I recall a study that platform stance servers had more forward momentum and pinpoint had more hang time. Platform enabled servers to rush the net faster. I believe Brooksby is the only platform server of the 4 servers depicted. He lands farther into the court and his torso is less upright. It almost looks like he's a sprinter coming out of the starting blocks. Ready to charge forward since his right leg doesn't have as far to go to take the next step. But he's not a net-rusher, is he?
This is the study that mentions platform servers can get to the net faster:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02640414.2012.695079
This is an article that compares Sampras, Roddick, and Federer parameters: Time from ball strike to landing, landing depth into the court, forward body speed. It shows Sampras lands sooner, deeper, and with more forward body velocity- all things that should contribute to improved volley position.
https://www.uspta.com/USPTA/Membership/Member_Resources/ADDvantage_Articles/Jan2020/Exploring_The_Serve-And-Volley_Paradigm_Shift.aspx
The following is a wonderful series of photos of pros making contact on serve with contact height listed along with player height (tallness).
https://jfawcette.myportfolio.com/serve-impact-height
Thanks for the link Colin, and amazing photos from Jim Fawcette. Good shout out regarding serve stance. It's interesting with Sinner as although he brings the back foot up now, there is still a considerable gap between his legs. Note the roddick leg kick with a platform is quite big:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17uvZRbcZ2A
But Fritz's is not:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3o3fL_59Gk
Dimitrov quite big:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onxAbQq4oW4
Tsitsipas not so big:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa1GVt6cudE
Now I'm wondering if the back leg drive is the main contributor to the back leg kick.
The drive of the back hip is responsible for a huge amount of the power of a serve, and the guys who don't have that (Fritz/Tsitsipas/Brooksby) may have less back leg drive. TSitsipas for example, lets his right knee fold in, inhibiting drive from the back leg.
But then he has a great serve.
More questions than answers! Thanks for the comments and links mate
But, notably, looking only at Roddick in the first instance he has a big back leg kick but on the second of those 7 points he’s starting to follow in: his balance is on the front (left) foot and he pushes off it and the back foot comes through really quick.
IOW, the back leg kick isn’t related to serve-volley/baseline per se. I think it might be more about platform? Alcaraz is platform-y, to my eyes.
Alcaraz definitely a step-up. I think the s & v notion has some merit still
Also, Tsitsipas’s serve is painful to watch. So wrong! I wonder if in later years he will discover like Connors did that you can get more power by throwing the ball more to the side.
Yeah I don't think you will see this on serve and volley because the leg kick is to stop your forward momentum and help you get back behind the baseline. Makes sense that S&V guys wouldn't do it
I’ll probably stop at some point 😬 but I realised that Ivan Lendl did a scorpion kick back when he served. Classic baseliner. So it’s been around for a while!
Given that momentum is real in tennis, it seems natural that the technical ability to enable a purple patch could be real and hard to catch with traditional stats. I think that people don’t measure stats like this since the sample size is incredibly small. However, you could easily have a proxy for this via looking at something like through match or per set variance, which can separate between mid floor mid ceiling and low floor high ceiling players (on return, the latter is probably preferred, while the opposite seems true for serve).
It would be interesting to see how, e.g., Sampras did on such an assessment. He was (in)famous at the time for high variance return games, just looking to hit a good streak in one return game a set.
Yeah I know that Tennis Insights, for example, could give a range, or bell curve of a player's shot to note the variance and see what that looked like. Good shout.
On the scorpion kick, what are your thoughts on the toss arm flinging back at the end of the serve motion? I had learned to keep that arm tucked into the body in order to create a reactive break for the racquet to accelerate through the ball.
Yes it tucks in as you go to hit the ball, but afterwards it is free to fly back no problem .
Oh, and I so agree with your take on Stef's BH. It needed to be said ah ah
Did Fonseca really hit a 120 mph forehand in that match? That would be one of the ten or so fastest recorded, wouldn't it?
ATP data says so, and it would be if correct. Wouldn't doubt it coming from him. He hit 181kmh in Aus (112mph). Could be desert air with new balls luckily combining
I haven't managed to see any extended match footage of him, but some of the highlights I've seen look like he's hitting absolutely massively. But if he's hitting 120 at 18, I look forward to what he does when he matures...
Hopefully just more consistency! Traditionally the trend is to get more conservative/less error prone with age for the young baseliners (Nadal/Djokovic/Sinner tracked/tracking that way)