everybody's talking about carlos alcaraz and mainly when we talk about him of course we talk
about how young he is and about his forehand and i actually made two videos already on his
phone because it is phenomenal so check out the links below in the description but today i want
to check out his serve and i'm going to use dr mark kovac's eight-stage model because i found
that really really helpful breaking down the serve step by step by step and also to point out what we
as mere mortals can try to copy and i also want to give a huge shout out to slomo tennis pro who
are allowing me to use their footage the link to their channel is down below go check him out great
courtside footage of all kinds of pros so let's get going with the carlos alcaraz serve
first stage in the serve is the starting position and that is a lot of times where
rec players are already getting in trouble because of one main thing the wrong grip so
carlos alcaraz has a continental grip and that is the grip that you need to develop a great serve
and then you see his positioning the tip of his left foot if we were to see that from the back
it would point to the net post and or the alley and that's exactly what you want to do you have a
little bit more of a shoulder width stands here and his right leg is staggered behind his left
and that already starts to give him a little turn of the hip because that is super important in the
later stages and if i'm rolling this forward we see that he's transferring his body weight
back to his back foot now the hands are releasing so both hands yes did go down together but now
you're seeing a distinct separation in the height of the arm so that old down together
up together is not happening so you clearly see that his left arm is very much above his right
other key aspects here of the toss and this is the second stage the release stage he's releasing the
ball from his hand about eye level to the top of his head and that is another characteristic
another fundamental that all great servers share because it makes for a really consistent
ball toss and what you're seeing here the toss is perpendicular to the court so he's not having
an angle he's not tossing the ball much further into the court and that sometimes we see for
instance reilly opelka tosses the ball much more inside of the court uh nick curios does that
carlos alcaraz still has of course by virtue of his tossing arm pointing to the net post
the ball in front of him here so he doesn't have to deliberately toss it further out in front
next key point is you see that his left arm is completely straight so you want to avoid having
any kind of bend in your elbow because again that does not help the consistency of your toss and
now we're coming into the most crucial stage of the serve and i know in a lot of lessons we're
focusing on the contact point and the issues are on the contact point most often a function
of something that's not quite correct in the loading stage or even of course in the release
stage meaning that the ball toss is all over the place and that to my mind actually is one of the
biggest issues that my clients have and that is why the contact varies so much if we have flaws
in the first three stages so stage number three loading stage or power position i think a lot of
coaches call it as well so this is where if you have a pinpoint stance like colors all caras does
when you bring your back foot behind your front foot what you don't want to do is you do not
want to put your right foot here parallel to the left because that means that you're prematurely
opening your hip and that is where you're losing a lot of control and power
you have the arm here at its lowest point the elbow is its lowest point and it corresponds with
the lowest bend in your knees tip of the racket is up and you clearly see this caulking position here
you also if we were to see that from the back would see a slight hip turn so that the right hip
actually points down and back a little bit more so you're loading into your back leg at this point
carlos alcaraz has more body weight on his back leg on his back foot than on his front foot
and that's why we're talking a lot about loading into your back leg load the back leg load down
and back because you want to go from this position down and back to up and slightly
forward the image that i'm always using is think about a spring if you want to coil it
you coil it down and back and the counter movement to that is up and out so the loading down and back
is the action and the reaction is the going up and out to contact point
a couple of other things to notice shoulder over shoulder and hip over hip so here the hitting arm
is below the toss arm so here the hitting shoulder is below
the top shoulder and the right hip is below the left and from this position
we're getting into the cocking position stage four and the characteristics here are tip of the racket
points to the ground you have a reversal of the shoulder over shoulder and if we were to look at
carlos alcaraz from the other side of the court we would still see him side on in addition to
the inside of the wrist the inside of the elbow the thoracic spine this part here of the chest are
also all looking up and this is not necessarily the easiest position to get into if you have
physical limitations so for instance if your shoulder mobility or your thoracic spine mobility
is not the best you will have issues getting into this position and that is not through
any fault of your own that's just how you are as a human being but this is a position
that all good servers have in common and then lastly you have the left arm tucked here in front
of the belly button and of course eyes are up on the ball stage five of the serve
acceleration so this is just the extension of your arm and of course all the power
that you created in the loading position accelerate up to contact point
and we're seeing that here if you look at the edge of the racket this is what carlos
alcaraz is leading with and then as he's going up to contact depending on what kind
of serve he's hitting there is a forearm pronation and an internal shoulder rotation we'll see that
in a second a little bit more but let's talk about the contact point that we're unfortunately not
quite seeing up here but trust me it's there and it is in front of him it is inside the court so a
lot of times what we're hearing is that you want to be fully extended the full extension is here
the arm wants to be extended your body actually does not want to be fully extended because that
would put a lot of strain on your shoulder if you were to make contact somewhere up here
so this tilt here is perfectly normal and actually again one of the characteristics of a great serve
and then stage seven so after contact you see the continuation of that forearm pronation in
combination with that internal shoulder rotation and the key part that we see and that sometimes
baffles people that have not necessarily studied serve motions as much is that the side with which
the server hits the ball is actually pointing to us but again that's just a sign of a great serve
and is one of the fundamentals that you want to have and need to have if you want to hit a
good serve which can be problematic again if you have physical limitations i'm one of these people
after my shoulder surgeries that was something that i had a really really hard time achieving
and it also reflected in my serve in addition to not necessarily getting into the best caulking
position so that's just physical limitations that i had but we don't of course see that
here in carlos alcaraz you still see that the left arm is tucked and we still don't see that
he's fully turned open the right hip is still a little bit further back another
sign of a great serve and this is something that you see a lot in rec tennis that at this point
if we were to look from the other side we would see a clear space between the legs from
the other side of the court so the deceleration continues to happen we're going into the finish
landing on the left foot great balance head is completely still the right leg comes up in this
dog leg kick and that is a function of keeping your balance as is the shooting back of the left
arm and this here is one of the things that you want to be really careful with this is a function
of how much work and how much power you created in your loading stage so i do see a lot of people
working on this landing stage but they never created that much energy to begin with in this
loading step so again this is a function this is something that looks the same on all grade servers
if you try to force yourself into this position it's not going to help your serve and then
of course which i'm adding on to the eight stage model stage nine an immediate recovery