hey guys in today's video i want to talk about the open face racket drop now already
made a video a long time ago titled open face versus on edge racket drop so in today's video
i want to talk a little bit more in detail about the open face racquet drop and how i discovered
it so when i did my serve research i noticed that some of the greatest servers of all time
players such as sampras federer becker don't drop the racket on edge this is the classic
way of taking the racket back let me give you a quick recap of what some of the greatest players
as well are doing which is an on-edge racket drop so players such as serena williams john isner or
goran ivanisevic will take the racquet into the trophy phase and now the racquet will drop
on edge now what happens shortly thereafter will depend on what type of serve they're attempting
but generally speaking when the on edge racket drop is occurring the racket is dropping with a
good distance from the body so what happens on an on edge racket drop serve is the racket will
loop if you take a look at my racket it loops in and out of this position it's like a looping
motion this is only present on some serves that are performed with the open face racket drop so
in other words on any on-edge racket drop serve you will see the racket coming in and out whether
we talk about flat slice or kick the racquet will loop in this way so what the open face
racket drop is is something that happens to many high level players so the racquet will not loop
it will simply go straight back that's why i named this the open face racket drop because the first
thing that happens shortly after the racket drop is that the racket face opens up towards the sky
now some people have misconceptions about this movement of the racket they're confusing this
with a waiter serve they're confusing this with an isolated movement of the arm it is neither what
happens with these great servers such as federer sampras or becker and many others by the way is
when their racket is dropping this is when the serve gets unloaded so what happens is that the
fact that the racket is dropping with an open face this has no effect on the amount of drop we get
and it's that range of motion with a lot of recreational players struggle
with so whether the racket is going on edge and then dropping
somewhere in here usually you want to measure the correct length of a drop by where the tip
of the racket is positioned and it is at the high level always positioned below
the lower back so whether you're dropping the racket on edge or with an open face this doesn't
influence how low the racket drops so the range of motion is not influenced by that whatsoever
now when we're talking about the timing of the torso rotation something very interesting happens
on these two styles of racket drop so whether we have an on edge racket drop or an open face racket
drop the initiation of the torso rotation happens when that elbow comes out this is
usually accompanied by the racket drop so as soon as the racket starts to drop this elbow
starts to come out so what happens on a serve with an on-edge racket drop is that even though we're
getting the elbow this way the racket still loops behind however on an open faced racket
drop because the racket is dropping this way there is no loop so in other words the racket
will drop straight down and then come around on this side and approach the ball forwards
now interestingly players with an open face racket drop when they attempt a kick serve for
example let's just think of boris becker or roger federer hitting a kick serve because there's
less torso rotation on a kick serve now the elbow doesn't come out right away it stays
on this side longer and therefore the racket will not fall straight back there will still be a small
loop even with an open face racquet drop so take a look at a kick serve movement the racquet will
be dropping on an open face but with a small looping movement here and on a flat serve the
elbow comes straight out and the racket will drop straight down so you guys are probably thinking
what does this mean nick why are you giving these different racket drops these weird names well i'm
going to tell you it doesn't mean anything you shouldn't worry about this at all if you have a
fundamentally correct serve in other words if your racket is dropping all the way down here
at the recreational level i usually look for the racket to drop towards the lower back area at the
high level i do look for it to drop a little bit before below the lower back so if you have this
and also if you are controlling your torso rotation correctly on all your serves and
if the racket is approaching the ball forward and you're pronating into the contact you got
absolutely nothing to worry about a lot of players that i analyze in my video analysis
will be worried about this they see themselves going like this and they say hey nick do i have a
waiter serve and i say absolutely not if that's a waiter serve then pete sampras boris becker
and roger federer have a waiter serve as well this is absolutely ridiculous
those are some of the best serves in the history of the game so if you have fundamental elements
correct inside of this area of the serve you shouldn't worry about how your racket is dropping
at all now i'm going to add that players that have good fundamentals inside of this area of
the serve that i just described are usually towards the higher recreational level i get
a lot of players with problems around the racket drop so one common problem is an isolated movement
of the arm so if you're consciously dropping the racket in other words if you're doing this
in an isolated movement you're going to be doing it very slowly so nothing else will be happening
in the body and you're going to be worried about how the racquet is dropping whether it's dropping
on edge or an open face i don't want you to concern yourself with the racket drop at all
because if you're concerned about it most likely you're going to do it very slowly in order to
execute it correctly and what happens then you're going to be left with a serve that's lacking
acceleration why because the serve is supposed to accelerate rapidly from the trophy position
whether it's a position or a phase once you reach this area of the serve we have to accelerate very
violently if you're worried about how your racket is dropping you're going to be doing this area of
the serve very slowly and your serve acceleration is going to suffer greatly because of it
so you got to do is execute all the serve fundamentals correctly and accelerate with
your entire body all the power sources have to be there and then with a lot of repetition
with a lot of time this will not happen overnight guys this takes years it would be
easy to say oh i'm going to make a quick fix i'm gonna apply this instant improvement and
all of a sudden i'm serving like pete sampras and roger federer just think about that that's
likely not gonna happen you're gonna have to put years of work into your serve
just like i did or any other high-level player because this part right here is a high level
characteristic and the only way you're going to get that is by doing a lot of repetition on
your serve you got to put in the hours if you want to have a high level racket drop
I already mentioned several times that it doesn't matter whether you're dropping with an
open face or with an on edge racket drop but it does matter some of the other mistakes that
i see around this area some players will have the racket way too close to their head it's a problem
that i occasionally see at the high level as well so players will get the racket over their head as
they're dropping it i'm sure you've seen players at your club doing this and what happens is with
this type of serve it is that you're guaranteed to have a more shallow racket drop when the
racket goes straight over your head and then back out usually it flies at a circle this way
yes you will get a racket drop or it but it will always be lower than a racket drop that occurs
when the racket is dropping more behind the body like this or behind the body like this in either
case there's a lot of space between your back and the racket there's absolutely no high-level
players that go straight over the head like this with the racquet there's always distance between
the head and the racket or the back and the racket no matter what style of racket drop it is
in order to accelerate the racket at maximum speed and allow it to fall deeply into the racquet drop
also something that novak djokovic struggled with early in his career is a position of the racket
head too far away from the body where the arm is somewhat extended this will hurt your racket drop
as well so when the arm is extended when you drop the racket the elbow can't come up quite as high
and now you have a range of motion limitations because of it so the absolute best way to position
your racket is not going to be like this it's not going to be like this it's going to be somewhere
in the middle with an angle of the arm the racket should be slightly pointed forward that's true
because what happens when you point the racket straight up this puts a weird angle on your wrist
so the racket's slightly pointing forward with a good distance between the racket and your head and
the arm in a comfortably bent position and it does not matter at all how the racket drops
what matters is that it drops in conjunction with all the different power sources that are
supposed to be unloaded in this phase of the serve and what am i talking about here i'm talking about
the four power sources on the serve which are swing momentum vertical momentum horizontal
momentum and forward momentum now if you're more interested in finding out how this works in
great detail check out my video on that subject so let me execute these four power sources in unison
now guys i have absolutely no idea how my racket dropped
and that is my point if you concern yourself with the racket drop whether you're trying to achieve
the open face racket drop or the on edge racket drop it doesn't matter what you're trying to do
the fact that you're trying to do it will kill your serve because you're going to do it very
slowly you're going to slow down this area of your serve and you won't be able to unload like
i just did now look i completely understand that you're trying to make this happen consciously you
want to fix it consciously you're concerned about it but i'm here to tell you is that don't concern
yourself with it learn the fundamentals there are so many fundamentals it'll take you a lot of time
to learn them go step by step and what my research has shown and what my case studies on the court
have shown that if you put in a lot of repetitions and all the fundamental elements are present the
racket will drop naturally very low completely by itself without you being conscious of it
and the interesting thing about today's topic is that i only discovered this three years ago so I
spent my entire playing career having an open face racket drop without ever knowing about it