hey guys i noticed something weird on my serve so i study my own serve all the time and try
to improve it even though i'm 44 years old there is never too late to add new things to
add improvements to your own shots so here's the thing that i noticed when i serve from the ad side
i have a certain type of stance i will put my back foot behind the front foot with a gap in
between the feet i made a video titled pinpoint versus platform stance and i highly recommend
that you watch it because in this video discuss how the positioning of our feet can make the coil
more natural so the further the feet are apart on the serve the more natural coiling we get on our
serve for example john mcenroe or even pete sampras have an extreme lateral platform stance what that
means is that when john mcenroe for example takes his racket back into the trophy phase his chest
is almost facing the back fence and this is related to the way his feet are positioned
in the setup phase of the serve now of course it's still possible to coil even if your feet
are parallel to each other in the setup stage of your serve however you would have to make the
coil later on in the service motion and it is not as intuitive as if you would put your feet
further apart meaning that the back foot is behind the front foot when we do this
naturally as we take our racket back we get a larger coil so naturally on my serve when i set
my feet up in this position when i get into that trophy phase my elbow gets to about right here now
here's the interesting thing when i serve from the deuce side i don't set my feet up in the same way my
back foot is much closer to my front foot so the tip of my back foot is aligned somewhere with the
heel so there's no gap there this is a significant difference because what's going to happen as a
result of this as i go into the trophy phase of my serve my elbow will be less coiled than it is on
the ad side so i was really interested to see whether the professional players have similar
setups on their serve so i looked up four players with platform stances i looked up pete sampras
roger federer novak djokovic and milos raonic now to my surprise federer raonic and djokovic
had the exact same setup on their serve so when you see federer serving from the ad side you
will see a gap between his feet this is the same for djokovic and raonic and all three players
when they serve from the deuce side doesn't matter what serve they're doing flat slice or kick
the back foot will be significantly closer to the front foot and it's aligned the same way my feet
are aligned on the deuce side the tip of the back foot is aligned with the heel of the front foot
now consequently these players are also getting less coil on the deuce side compared to the ad side
so the first question i asked myself when i discovered something interesting like this
is is it possible that some of the greatest servers of all time
like a federer or a raonic can have weaknesses on their serves are they doing something wrong
and the first instinct that i always have is no they can't possibly have any weaknesses
however on this particular issue the interesting thing is that i looked up pete sampras as well now
pete in my opinion has the greatest serve of all time together with ivanisevic and when
pete sets up his serve no matter if he's on the ad side or the deuce side the feet are very
far apart there's a large gap between his feet on both sides
and consequently pete gets a tremendous amount of coil on the deuce side as well as the ad side
so when i apply my fundamentals to this particular topic it is
absolute fact that when we get a larger coil and i'm talking about serves
at a high level the more coil a player gets there is more range of motion in other words when the
elbow is further back there's more space for the arm and the racket to accelerate when there's
less of a coil there is less space to do so now interestingly i think a lot of players like myself
when we are serving towards the deuce side we have this mental block because the ball
is going towards the left but yet we are going to be turned towards the right so many players suffer
from this mental block they think that they can't really get the ball inside that box if
they're turned towards the opposite side now we don't have this problem when we're serving to the
ad side because even though we're turned this way the ball is going towards the right so it's much
easier to accept for us mentally that we're going to coil quite a bit when we're serving towards the
ad side or in other words towards the right for right-handed players but i gotta tell you i tried
out the different stances and i'm gonna make the switch when i'm from now on serving on the
deuce side i'm gonna set my feet up further apart and i'm gonna get a larger coil yes it does feel
a little bit awkward but i gotta tell myself that the direction of the ball depends on the angle of
the racket face it doesn't depend on how my body is positioned so even though i'm serving here
from now on i'm gonna keep my feet further apart a la sampras and what i've been experiencing is
more torso rotation and more power with this type of setup serving towards the deuce side
so guys the question is is it wrong with federer raonic and djokovic for example
are doing it and by the way there's many other players with platform stances that have the same
interesting characteristic in common but i don't think it's generally wrong to serve with the feet
closer together it's also not wrong to have the elbow in a more neutral position this is
going to be up to a player's preference some players are uncomfortable coiling a lot just
think about copying john mcenroe's serve i can't do it it's too extreme of a coil i can't get out
of this coil and some players might be the same way now when it comes to those three players
maybe if they tried it out they liked it better maybe they haven't been presented
with this information i'm not sure but when it comes to myself i have tested this out and there's
absolutely no doubt that when i set my serve up in the regular way the way i've been doing it
for 30 years i don't get as much power as i do with this new stance so let me try it out one
more time i'm going to set it up the regular way the way i was doing it for many years
okay and now i'm going to try the new pete sampras way i'm going to have my feet
further apart even on the deuce side
absolutely i get more torso rotation i get more power
and i'm doing this i'm making the switch guys long live pete sampras greatest server of all time