Informal stroke speed survey of US tennis-Postscript

After the last post where I reported stroke speed measurements for high school varsity tennis players, I received a comment from a reader who raised some interesting questions that I felt would make the basis of an interesting post and becoming a starting point to share some other interesting stroke speed-serve speed, specifically-“phenomena” with you.

The two main questions raised in this reader’s comment were as follows:

Q1: You mentioned the wide range of skills among the high school players you measured. In a future post would you be willing to break out your data to show the difference in ball speeds between the couple best players and the run of the mill HS player?

A: The average fastest serve for three 5A State singles (#1 to #3) champions was 104.7 MPH.

The average first serve (all serves combined) was 94.5 MPH.

The average second serve was 73.9 MPH.

The serve speeds of these State high school singles champions are comparable to the speeds demonstrated by the typical Nationally-ranked 18-and-under junior boy (see the post titled “Memo to American college and junior players: Find another 30 MPH ASAP!) whose average first serve was 91 MPH and average second serve was 71 MPH.

Q2: Also, how much variance is there in the Division I ball speed data? Having measured, using a RADAR gun and video analysis, the serve speeds of several Division I male players (from one team), I'm surprised that the average first serve speed you found for Division I players is just 90 mph. My measurements found first serves to be on average more than 10 mph higher than that. My measurements were in practice, though, and not in competition so that might explain much of the difference. For instance, the players were simply hitting hard first serves, not mixing up the speed and spin as they do in matches.

A: The way I measure serve speeds, I record the speeds of individual serves and note what type of serve (flat, slice, topspin, or kick) was struck. So, when I report the average serve speed for either first or second serve, the speeds of all serve types are lumped together in that figure. So, on first serves, the faster flat serve speeds are averaged together with the slower slice and topspin serve speeds.

To address the comment, if we consider the average fastest serve speed for 1^st serve for the D1 players I’ve measured, that average fastest 1^st serve speed is comparable to the serve speed measurements made by the comment author (which I am now pretty sure that he measured the average fastest 1^st serve speed) :

102.4 MPH (speed range was 81 to 120 MPH, mine) versus 100 MPH (his)

What’s also interesting to mention here is the trend I’ve noticed in the speed differential between the different serve types, i.e. flat versus slice and flat versus topspin/kick serves.

What’s interesting is that the speed differential between the different types of serves is relatively consistent even between the vastly different competitive levels from ATP pros down to 3.5 to 4.0 high school varsity players.

What I mean by this is:

The speed differential between a flat and slice serve is between 15 and 20 MPH at every playing level from the top ATP pros down through the NTRP 3.5 to 4.0 crowd.

For example, Andy Roddick’s flat serve averages typically averages around 135 to 140 MPH whereas his slice serve typically registers between 117 to 12 MPH. The typical NTRP 4.0 hits his fastest flat serve around 85 MPH, and his slice serve averages around 65 to 70 MPH.

The speed differential between a flat and topspin serve is typically 20 to 25 MPH for all playing levels I’ve measured so far.

FYI, if you are wondering what the difference between a topspin serve and a kick serve is, the easiest way is to distinguish them is to observe the direction the ball moves after the bounce.

A topspin serve bounces straight ahead or slightly toward the middle of the court relative to the original flight path of the serve, whereas a kick serve bounces toward the side fence (for right-handed servers, the bounce is toward the right side fence and for lefties, it’s toward the left side fence).

The speed differential between a flat and kick serve is typically between 25 to 30 MPH for all playing levels I’ve measured so far.

Why are kick serves slower than topspin serves? The answer is because of the slight difference in the arm swing path between the two serves—the additional sidespin applied to the kick serve by moving the toss further overhead decreases the forward momentum of the arm swing slightly resulting in a slightly lower overall racket speed (and therefore, (s)lower ball speed).

So, based on this consistent speed differential between the four main types of serves, I can essentially predict what the serve speed “profile” of a player is based on a single serve speed measurement. For example, if a player hits a kick serve at 75 MPH, the fastest flat serve they can hit will be in the range of 100 to 105 MPH. And if a player can hit a flat serve at 105 MPH, their slice serve will range from 85 to 90 MPH.

Are there exceptions to this “rule” of serve speed differential?

Of course there are… And the exceptions are of course, those players who can hit the absolute fastest serves (into the service boxes, of course)… i.e. the Andy Roddicks and Ivo Karlovics of the world, that is…

Roddick, for example, in the match he played today in the Masters Cup against Davydenko, routinely hit his flat first serve around 230 KPH or 143 MPH and his kick second serve around 160 KPH or 99 MPH….

This makes for a speed differential of 44 MPH!

But, I think you’ll agree, that in terms of on-court effectiveness, that 44 MPH difference doesn’t really have the same impact on Andy as it would for many lower-level competitive players whose maximum first serve speed is maybe, on a really good day, around 90 MPH. These are the same players who, after missing the box with their “90 MPH bombs”, then follow up with a massive 46 to 51 MPH topspin, “get it into the box” sitter that “quacks” as it flies over the net, to avoid the dreaded double-fault!

So, to close out this post, here's a memo to those of you who are standing, lifelong members of “Club 46”:

1) In order to hit an effective spin (second) serve, you need to generate the same amount of racket speed as you would on your flat serve to create both the necessary spin (for control) and ball speed (so your serve doesn’t quack and get smacked into all corners of the court by the returner).

2) If you want to hit a relatively effective topspin or kick serve, you need to be able to hit your topspin/kick serve around 70 to 75 MPH (air speed) to generate enough height and speed after the bounce to prevent most players from smacking your serve to all parts of the court without conscience.

3) Of course, if you can’t hit your flat first serve around 100 MPH, there’s basically no way (given the laws of physics governing the universe we inhabit) you can generate enough racket speed to hit a 70 to 75 MPH topspin/kick serve. So, if that’s your situation, may I suggest you start training with the SpeedChain to help you develop that extra 20 to 30 MPH you need to reach “Club 100”?

TTFN!

Informal stroke speed survey of US tennis-continued

Recently, I had the opportunity to continue my survey of serve and groundstroke speed in US tennis by measuring the stroke speeds of high school varsity (“HS”) players that participated in a regional qualification tournament for my home state’s 5A Division (overall) State Championships.

To give you a bit of background on the players involved, there were players from 10 different high schools trying to qualify for the State 5A Boys’ Tennis Championships in 7 divisions: Singles #1 to #3 and Doubles #1 to #4. So there was a wide range of players from a variety of competitive backgrounds from those players who only compete for their high school team during the high school season to a sectional Top 20-ranked player.

If I was to describe the approximate playing levels of the 30 players whose speeds I measured, I would estimate that the majority of players would probably be rated somewhere between NTRP 3.7 (by this I mean between NTRP 3.5 and 4.0) all the way to about NTRP 5.0.

Anyway, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty…

The average 1^st serve speed of these HS players was 68.9 MPH.

The average 2^nd serve speed was 60.8 MPH.

The average forehand speed (during neutral rallies) was 46.1 MPH.

The average forehand speed (during neutral rallies) was 46.9 MPH.

Now, let’s put these speeds into some context…

NCAA Division 1 vs. HS Tennis

1^st serve: 90.5 MPH (NCAA) vs. 68.9 MPH (HS)

2^nd serve: 78.5 MPH (NCAA) vs. 60.8 MPH (HS)

Forehand: 78.5 MPH (NCAA) vs. 46.1 MPH (HS)

Backhand: 73.9 MPH (NCAA) vs. 46.9 MPH (HS)

By now, I’m pretty sure that shouldn’t be surprising to you that direct measurements of stroke speed confirm the perception that there should be a pretty big difference in the stroke speeds between college and high school tennis players.

Effectively there is, on average:

• A 20 MPH speed gap between the first and second serves of the typical male collegiate and the better high school varsity player.
• A nearly 30 MPH speed gap between the groundstrokes of the typical male collegiate player and the better high school varsity player.
  
• A 40 to 50 MPH speed gap* between the first and second serves of the top tour pros and the better high school varsity player.

*see my earlier post titled "Memo to American college and junior tennis players: Find another 30 MPH ASAP!" for serve speed data from the top ATP pros.

What I find more than ironic in these measurements is the fact that there are some, perhaps many players, parents and coaches in the US who think that there are more than enough high school varsity tennis players to populate the rosters of collegiate varsity tennis programs and so there is no need to offer collegiate playing opportunities and scholarships to international (read “foreign”) tennis players.

While it’s true that from the perspective of sheer numbers, there are more than enough high school varsity players for college tennis coaches to choose from. From the perspective of tennis ability, the reality is that there are only around 200 to 300 total, legitimate male or female college tennis prospects that emerge from either the US junior and high school tennis ranks each calendar year.

What’s the take-home lesson then? The “better” high school varsity tennis player has no realistic chance of playing for a truly competitive collegiate tennis program, and currently the true route to the collegiate level continues to run through (National) junior tennis and not high school tennis.

For those of you who are familiar with the current competitive tennis pathways here in the US, what I’ve written about in this post is hardly news to you. But for others who aren’t so familiar about how to advance themselves within the American competitive scene, you need to realize that high school varsity tennis competition is really a side or back door to collegiate tennis at best.

The proverbial “front door” to the higher levels of tennis here definitely runs through USTA tournament competition where the goal is to qualify for the National Junior or ITF Championship events held nationwide throughout the calendar year.

And maybe next time I attend a high school varsity tennis match or tournament, I think I will strongly consider measuring the groundstroke speeds of the players using a calendar instead of a radar gun… ;)

TTFN!

How to make sense of the new WTA Power Index

In this post, I’ll take a short break from our ongoing discussion about how to improve your court movement to discuss an interesting speed-related event from the tennis world.

The event I wanted to mention was the launch of the “WTA Power Index” earlier this month at the final Acura Classic in San Diego. The point of the WTA Power Index is marketing—i.e. to give the fans a greater appreciation of the performance capabilities of the top female pros by highlighting how powerfully they strike the ball.

According to the official WTA Tour press release (8/8/07) explaining the Power Index:

“(I)t’s a great way (The Power Index) to recognize the extraordinary talent, athleticism, and sheer power of our top players… Other leading professional sports have introduced new methods to measure and compare the performance of their players to provide another level of insight to fans. The Power Index affords that same opportunity for women’s tennis.”

The WTA Power Index is calculated by taking the average speed of a player’s first serve, second serve, forehand, backhand, and overhead measured using the Hawk-Eye line-calling systems that are installed on all of the center courts of all the US Open Series tournaments.

And thus far, the most powerful player on the WTA Tour after the first three weeks of the Power Index is: (fanfare, please) Yaroslava Shvedova of Russia with an index of 102.9 MPH. Future Hall-of-Famer Venus Williams is second with an index of 98.8 MPH. Other notable (i.e. recognizable) names among the Top 10 players on the cumulative Power Index stats are Nadia Petrova (#4 at 97.4 MPH) and Elena Dementieva (#5 at 95.8 MPH).

Yaroslava Shvedova is the most powerful player on the WTA Tour? Hmmm… Shvedova isn't exactly a household name in women's tennis. She's not even one of the higher-ranked WTA players sitting currently at #74 in the official WTA Tour singles rankings.

In fact, there isn’t much of a correlation between the Power Index rankings and the actual WTA rankings. Look, the most powerful player in the short history of the Power Index, Shvedova, is currently ranked #74, and upon closer examination, 7 of the current Top 10 players on the Power Index are ranked outside the Top 25 of the actual player rankings.

I wonder how the WTA Tour is going to explain the inverse correlation between power performance and ranking performance?

Regardless of the Tour’s spin on the issue, I think that it shouldn’t surprise anyone that pure power isn’t necessarily a guarantee of match wins, especially among the women. Especially when you begin to notice that many of the biggest hitters among the WTA pros are not very adept movers on the court.

If you’ve been following this blog on a regular basis, you should understand by this point that slow court movement combined with big hitting is really a recipe for disaster from a high-performance perspective. Attempting to hit “big” with slow feet (you should also realize that there are many in the (pro) coaching establishment who preach that powerful stroking compensates for being a slow mover) is the classic, proven formula for maximizing unforced errors and makes it even more difficult to win any tennis match, especially one at the pro level.

Another detail to consider in explaining the disparity in the Power Index and actual player rankings is the fact that the women achieve those shot velocities with using far less (top-)spin that is essential to control such high-velocity strokes during play.

What this means is that while some WTA players may generate high shot speeds, they do so with far less control than their male counterparts on the ATP Tour. With far less spin on their shots (as in 50 to 70 percent less spin compared with the men on average) and therefore, far less control over their shots, the players who are top-ranked on the Power Index are, not surprisingly, also those same players with a proven reputation for generating large numbers of unforced errors during their matches.

Any tennis player who commits too many errors of the unforced variety is going to have a tougher time winning matches with any consistency. So when you begin to look at things more closely, it’s no real surprise that there isn’t a strong correlation between the Power Index rankings and the actual WTA rankings. The big hitters make way more errors during play and have a harder time winning matches consistently, so their rankings are lower.

I would be very interested to know what would happen if the WTA Tour could somehow introduce a “spin factor” into the Power Index—my prediction is that when spin production is part of the formula, the Power Index rankings will much more closely resemble the player rankings. And, yes, if you are wondering, with Hawk-Eye technology, it is possible to measure the spin rates of each shot struck during play.

Finally, I’ll make one final comment about the potential impact of the WTA Power Index… That is to say that tennis may be the one professional sport where the fans may achieve a greater insight into the quantitative aspects of the performance of their favorite players before the professional coaches who are paid the big bucks to train and prepare them.

Pro tennis coaches, by and large, do not pay much, if any attention to the quantitative aspects of the sport they are considered experts at. Sure they can recognize unusual physical ability—“talent”—when they see it, but they have almost absolutely zero idea about the quantitative details of the talent they observe.

Pro coaches generally do not know the speeds and spin rates or running times of their players. They consider these parameters to be unnecessary details mainly because they generally believe that the success in pro tennis is determined primarily, if not exclusively, by intangible factors such as “confidence” and mental toughness and motivation to perform hard work. They even believe that these intangibles can overcome the great majority of physical or technical shortcomings that a given player may have.

These beliefs are mainly based in the personal experiences of the great majority of coaches at the pro level, who were often former professional players themselves (with varying degrees of success). In the days when they were active players (typically in the 1970s and early 1980s), it was true that the psychological intangibles were paramount in determining a player’s ability to succeed on the tour because there was very little physical or technical separation between the pro players of that day and age.

Today, physical ability plays a far greater role in determining a player’s ability to succeed at the pro level, although the establishment continues to recite their deeply entrenched perception that the intangibles remain the most critical determinant of pro success. Today, racket speed and foot speed in particular create separation between the true pro contenders from the rest of those players toiling in the purgatory known as the Challenger and Futures circuits.

No matter how mentally tough and focused a prospective pro player may be, if he can’t consistently hit first serves over 125 MPH or can’t put a 130 MPH serve consistently back into play or retrieve a 95 MPH groundstroke slammed into the corners, no amount of mental skill and savvy can compensate for a lack of physical capacity.

This is the new reality of professional tennis…

Pro tennis has become essentially identical to other professional sports in that you must possess ultimate physical talent to succeed at the highest possible levels of the sport. Intangibles such as confidence and motivation remain as key factors in maximizing one’s competitive potential, but such intangibles can no longer compensate for a player’s physical shortcomings and athletic limitations (see Hingis, Martina).

TTFN!

Memo to American College and Junior Players: Find another 30 MPH ASAP!

Several posts ago, I summarized the serve speeds I measured for male and female National junior competitors at the Easter Bowl Championships in Palm Springs in April. I was able to measure serve speeds from players in every age group represented at that event, except for the players in the 18-and-under Boys event, so I have been looking for an opportunity to gather some serve speed numbers from that age division.

Recently, a National Open Junior event was held in Denver for the Boys 18s division, and I used that opportunity to measure the serve speeds (first and second) of the participants there. The tournament field was reasonably strong for a National Open event as the Top 8 seeds in the tournament were all ranked inside the Top 120 nationally, and the Top 5 seeds were ranked inside the Top 60 nationally. There were players ranked as high as #11 in the National 18s and players ranked in the 1500s as well. So there was a wide range of competitive, 18-and-under American junior players represented in this event.

I measured the serve speeds of 34 of the 64 participants during live matchplay, and the results I found were interesting to say the least.

The fastest first serve was 118 MPH, and the fastest second serve was 94 MPH (both by the same player).

The slowest first serve was 63 MPH and the slowest second serve was 60 MPH.

The average first serve speed of the 34 players surveyed was 91 MPH.

The average second serve speed of the 34 players surveyed was 71 MPH.

30% of the total number of first serves measured (200+) exceeded 100 MPH.

70% of the players hit a first serve over 100 MPH.

15% of the players hit a first serve over 110 MPH.

33% of the players hit a second serve over 80 MPH.

What to make of these speed measurements?

The “good news” is… If I were to compare these to the serve speeds I measured at this National Open tournament to those I have measured at the NCAA Division 1 level, these serve speeds of the 34 juniors are directly comparable in terms of both average first and second serve speed. Even the fastest and slowest serves are very similar, if not identical those of D1 players. And, it isn’t too surprising that these junior players share the same serve speed characteristics as the D1 players, as the vast majority of players who are Top 6 or Top 8 in D1 men’s tennis programs are recruited from the players who have high national singles rankings and typically participate in high-level USTA National Junior tournaments such as this National Open.

The "bad news" is… If you compare the serve speeds of these typical US college and junior players to those at the ATP level, the difference is stunning. The typical US college or junior player serves, on average, around 30 MPH SLOWER than a successful ATP player.

For a quick and dirty comparison to the ATP pros, I compiled the serve stats for 16 of the 32 players who made it to the 3^rd round of the Men’s Singles at Wimbledon (upper half of the draw including Federer, Roddick and Gasquet). This is what I found:

The average first serve speed of these 16 male pros was 119 MPH (compared to 91 MPH for our sample of nationally-ranked under 18 boys).

The average second serve speed of these 16 male pros was 99 MPH (compared to 71 MPH for our sample of nationally-ranked under 18 boys).

On average, the ATP men serve around 30 MPH faster, on average for both first and second serves, than the typical American male high-performance (college or nationally-ranked junior) player.

30 MPH!! On average!! Which means that the difference in serve speed could be as much as 40 MPH faster in some cases.

Given this astonishing difference in serve speed capability between the established ATP players and the typical American college or junior player, is it truly realistic for the great majority of young competitive tennis players here in the US to be competitive at the pro level when they are giving away at least 30 MPH on serves alone? Are their pro dreams even reachable?

At the very least, what can they do about closing the speed gap?

If you ask the tennis coaching and conditioning establishment (USTA, USPTA, PTR, etc.) here in the US how to increase your serve speed, they’ll tell you that you have only two alternatives: 1) improve your technique and/or 2) lift weights, pull rubber bands, and throw medicine balls to increase your strength. Well, the former alternative (changing technique) simply takes too long, and the overwhelming evidence from the sports science realm is that the latter (conventional, strength-focused conditioning exercises) simply doesn’t increase your racket, therefore, serve speed.

What now?

If you’ve been reading this blog with any regularity, you already know what the solution to the “I want/need more serve speed problem" is: train with the Tennis SpeedChain.

TTFN!