Serve Racquet Head Speed (Page 2)

You can click on the pictures for a larger version.

There are a couple of things that we'd like to point out about the diagrams.

• As you can see from the picture of Sampras, the footage was taken from the sideline at the baseline.
• The ball is in yellow. You can see the ball falling from the toss and its path once it has been hit.
• The racquet head pattern is in blue and is composed of about 200 points.
• When the points are close together that means the velocity is low. When the points are farther apart, the velocity is higher. Speed is calculated by dividing the distance between two points by the time. (We'll go into detail on how the velocity was calculated in the next installment of this section.)
• You may note that most of the diagrams have two "empty spots" which correspond to the pre-toss. Those are where Sampras' legs were. The racquet head tip was out sight when it passed in front of his legs.

SERVE A --------------------------------------SERVE B

SERVE C --------------------------------------SERVE D

SERVE E --------------------------------------SERVE F

SERVE G --------------------------------------SERVE H

SERVE I --------------------------------------SERVE J

Would you expect the same for other top players? Not necessarily so! Although there were some similarities some of the patterns are as individual as the players.

In the next installment of this analysis, we'll be adding the racquet-tip speeds (the specific numbers) onto these diagrams and post them on the web. But the speeds may give away the type of serve to some of you so we're going to wait until you've had a chance to review the diagrams here.

You can write us at serves@cislunar.com and we'll let you know if you are right!