The Service Backswing

Ahwile back, in this blog post and in this shot-making tip on the website, I mentioned in passing that Pete Sampras has a long backswing on his serve.

It's hard to find fault in Pete Sampras' serve, but many people would find fault with that aspect of it. Many say that the backswing is superfluous, that the service motion really begins when the racket drops down behind your back in the "back-scratching" position.

But that isn't so, unless you have a hitch in your serve so the racket head pauses at that point, accelerating then from a dead stop at 0 miles per hour.

It would be more accurate to say that the service motion really begins just before that, when your backswing is finished and you've cocked the racket in the "trophy" position. But players like Sampras keep the racket head moving even through that point. So, I'm not convinced that they aren't building up racket-head momentum with that long backswing.

Let me keep this brief and skip the pros and cons for now. I'm not interested in convincing you that there's a "right" backswing you should use. I'm interested in making you AWARE of your backswing.

Pay attention to it, not with a view to fixing or changing it, but to simply understand it. Feel it. You should know exactly what you're doing and be able to demonstrate your backswing.

Why? Because over time, or even during the course of a tiring match, it can change without you realizing that. All you know is that you're having trouble with your serve. Because the timing's off. Whenever I start having trouble with my serve, I go out to practice serving, keying on my backswing and making it shorter -- like it used to be. Almost always, my problem immediately disappears.

A long backswing takes longer. Though there are other ways to compensate for that, the natural way is to toss higher. In fact, players with long backswings tend to have high tosses.

Since it takes more force to toss higher, a slight miscalculation throws off a high toss more than it would a low one. Also, since a high toss stays in the air longer, it's more affected by wind. Perhaps most important at the upper levels of the game, a high toss gives the receiver time to read your toss. For example, if your toss is out to the side, the receiver can tell that you are going to slice the serve. If your toss is high, he or she has time to register and react to this knowledge. That's why high tossers, like Pete Sampras, work hard to disguise their serves, trying to hit every kind of serve from roughly the same toss. But that isn't ideal: there's a trade-off in it that had better be worth what you're getting for it.

So, just what IS a short backswing? Let's look at one, in Rafael Nadal...

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Here is a sequence of still shots of that serve.





Notice that Rafa never lets the racket drop below his waist. Instead of dropping the racket down alongside his leg in the direction of the lower arrow (as Sampras, Federer, and others with a long backswing do), Rafa takes it straight back over his shoulder in the direction of the upper arrow.





Both arms are going up together. I circled the ball to show that it's still in his hand.


In the last photo of this sequence, Rafa is just about to drop the racket down behind his back in the "back-scratching" position. You might want to watch the video again to get a good idea what a short backswing is. You can compare it with these photos and videos of Pete Sampras' long backswing.

So, short backswing? or long backswing? Chances are that you'll be most comfortable with something in between.

More on this at the main website in a few days.