A few weeks back, I had the privilege of working alongside coach Marcel du Coudray. We were coaching his pupil - ATP player Marc Polmans - at the Rogers Cup in my hometown of Montreal. Marc was accepted as the last entry into qualifying and got his first top 50 win against Andrey Rublev where he came back from 3-5 down in the 3rd set and save 3 match points at 3-6 down in the breaker (Rublev was ranked #49 in the world at the time of the match).
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Coaches, players, parents...even your aunt Judie know the importance of the serve in today’s modern game. More specifically, the first serve. The first serve is so critical that the top 10 servers on the ATP, year after year, win over 77% of their first serve points! And it’s not just on the men’s side. The top 10 women on the WTA win between 69%-79% of first serve points.
Want more proof? Look at Table 1 - in 2016, the top serving men won over 3/4 of their first serve points. On the other hand, when these top pros missed their first serves, they only won between 52% and 55% of their points.
Last week, French tennis star Jo-Wilfred Tsonga posted a sneak peek video of his off-season training regimen...and almost every tennis fan on the web had a comment to share. Comments from fans included “what’s Jo doing? He’s gonna hurt himself!” to “I would never lift weights during practice!” while some were more encouraging, like “wow look at his hard work, he’s gonna be ready to go for the 2017 season!”. Coaches had other things to say including a comment along the lines of...“This is type of training just doesn’t work for tennis players, their skill will deteriorate due to fatigue of the lift”. Here's what the session looked like: