Nathan's Serves

Before analyzing Nathan's serves I better update one more video from the side that may help understanding his technique



Although three videos are not enough to understand thoroughly Nathan's serving technique we can see some tendencies:

Until the power position all seems to go very well with Nathan's serve. I think Nathan on the toss can keep his right arm stretched at the moment of release of the ball. Its probably only a minor change there but maybe would improve his tossing consistency if it is a problem.

As a curiosity, Nathan tosses the ball higher than any player that I have measured. The ball remains on the air on serve number 1 for 1.2 seconds (240 frames), on serve number 2 for 1.13 seconds (227 frames) and on serve number 3 1.13 seconds (227 frames).On all of these serves the ball stays on the air for longer than Richard 1.1 second. On the serve comparison post in June you can check the different height of ball toss of Federer, Sampras, Roddick, Richard, Brenton and myself.

Does that mean that Nathan needs to get his toss lower? maybe but not necessarily. Only nathan can answer that question.

I think the most important aspect that Nathan has to improve in his serve is to try and get a lower position of the racket on the drop. If you watch the 3rd video side view you can freeze the footage between second 52 and 58 you can easily see that Nathan's left hand is always higher than his left elbow. Have a look on what Federer does in the same drop position:



Notice how Federer's right hand is lower than his elbow. That is one common element of all pros and all good servers of the game. I'm currently trying to improve my drop and I have already felt such a great improvement with my serve. It feels very different and somehow on a few serves I notice that the ball bounced higher than normal. My serve will be on the next posts and I do believe we will see a huge improvement.