I was kinda kidding about the forehand replacing the service, coz of course the need to aim the square require to hit the ball higher...
Oh, sorry! I honestly didn't get your joke at that time ...
And anyway, it's hard to believe that the strike developing the most power ( = the service), could be almost equaled by the forehand, especially on a regular basis.
Manutoo, I don't know if I'm being clear, but what I'm trying to say is that only that very beautiful and powerful groundstroke that happens only once in a while (maybe only one on a whole match) may overpass the 110~115 Mph barrier. In my first post, when I was talking about Marat Safin (who were used to have the "heaviest" baseline game in my opinion - along with Guga), I've mentioned that he is able, on a good day, to hit during the entire match balls faster than 80 Mph. What I'm not saying is that a normal attacking/flat shot is sent to the other side of the net with those impressive speeds.
Fastest Serve : Fed 129 MPH Nadal 120 MPH
Average 1st Serve Speed: Fed 117 MPH Nad 112 MPH
This was a fantastic match, huh? But look, the difference between the fastest serve and the average serve is not so big because the dynamics that are envolved on/in (sorry, I never learned prepositions) the serve are quite different from those present on a groundstroke. As you know, when serving, we have a notable control of the whole thing: we choose the toss of the ball, the position of our body, of the racquet, etc. It is a comfortable position that allows us to be much more consistent that when hitting a ball during a rally. However, at the same time, when the opposite person shots a reachable high speed ball, it is possible for us to use the power that has been generated and even add some power. Agassi, Nalbandian and Hewitt are outstanding examples of counter-punchers (the first two of them are the best "returning-serves" that I've ever seen). So, under very special occasions, I think that it is possible, in fact, to hit a groundstroke at very impressive speeds. It is important to add that both Roger and Rafa have the ability to generally be very consistent when serving. Great fast servers, like Roddick (or even not so great ones, like Feliciano Lopes, who served yesterday the third fastest serve of history at 242 KMH - unfortunately the link is in portuguese, but I may translate it for you if you want to:
http://www2.uol.com.br/tenisbrasil/diaadia/ult138u36893.htm) usually have an average first serve of about 210-215 Kmh, but once in a while may hit one scud of 240-245 kmh (the distance between the fastest and the average serve is, in these cases, much bigger; the same ratio, I think, may be used when comparing a normal groundstroke of James Blake with one of those that he does (and hits inside the court) when jumps and almost literally dives towards the ball ...
In fact, I've seen Roger Federer hit (and mistake) a serve with a speed of 222 Kmh in Australian Open this year. I guess the match was against Djokovic, but I may be wrong.
If you use metric system in Brazil, why do u quote speeds in MPH from the Hawk Eye ..? If it was in Brazil, the Hawk eye should have shown KMH, no ?
Manutoo, I've used the imperial system on many times here on these posts mainly because I thought that the majority of fans that read this forum were from US or England. But you are from France (along with many people from this discussion board, I guess), so maybe this worriness of mine may be unnecessary. The second reason for that because in many cases, the situation that I've read or watched and then described here happened under the presence of radar guns that measured the marks in Mph. So I was trying to be precise. The third and last reason is that the radar guns that were used when I seriouslly trained were all imported from US. So all marks were measured in mph, and unfortunatelly there was no switch button to kph. Most people here are not used with this system, so the junior players commonly were not excited with this stuff. Only a very very few tournaments here in São Paulo have these radar guns, and they usually don't work, or are wrongly placed, and then bizarre numbers start to be shown during the matches.
Sorry again for my macarronic english ...
. Greetings from Brazil.
by manutoo » 03 Jun 2008, 16:46 
