Bigger Better Tennis - Paul Dale

 To Snap or Pronate, Which is Best?  There are two theories on how to hit a serve.   There are people who believe that “Snapping” the wrist is the best way and others who believe that “Pronating” is the best method of serving. The difference between the two options is difficult to detect visually. When you Snap the wrist to execute the serve the racquet-head tends to finish with the tip leading and the right and left edges going through contact almost symmetrically. When you Pronate to hit the serve the left edge (in the case of a right-hander) tends to lead the racquet through the ball. For me, both styles do the same thing when executed correctly. Both Snapping and Pronating, when done correctly, promote a wrist that dominates the arm during the serve. Whenever the arm dominates the wrist during the serve the result will be a serve lacking feel for your target and reduced racquet-head speed. A dominant wrist that Snaps or Pronates will give the serve th

Many years ago I was watching a match in Japan between Andres Gomez and Aaron Krickstein. I was sitting close to the court and realized that I was watching something very different from anything I had ever seen before.   I was watching a table tennis rally!   Both Gomez and Krickstein were trying to produce a rally that was dominated by the flight of the ball rather than where the ball was bouncing . They were controlling the ball inside a tight “funnel” of arc through the use of topspin. Today that might seem normal but back then it was the beginning of a new era in tennis. Long before this, Bjorn Borg had changed our perception of topspin in tennis.   Borg hit the ball with much more arc than any other player at that time and years later while watching   that match in Japan I was witnessing the beginning of a post Borg era. The younger players coming through such as Krickstein and Jimmy Arias were hitting tremendous topspin on the ball and in the process were increasi