Customer Reviews

Nick Bollettieri's Stroke Instruction Series: Sonic Serve DVD

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The Sonic Serve provides very advanced instruction in minute detail. This DVD analyzes the world's six best serves and finds common fundamentals in each. It analyzes each part of the kinetic chain of movement through high speed video. The serve taught in the tape involves the entire body, the legs, hips, torso, chest, shoulder, arm and wrist. Slow motion video emphasizes 360 degrees of racquet rotation with pronation of the forearm and wrist. If you are looking to utilize your entire body to create sonic booms with your serve, this is the DVD for you.

However, obviously lacking are the all too important features of spin and slice. At the end of the DVD, Bollettieri promises a follow-up session in a "couple of months". The months have turned into years and still no Sonic Serve II. If a kick serve is what you are looking for, send Nick Bollettieri an email and ask where the next installment is.

In spite of the lack of subject matter on slice and kick, the Sonic Serve is great for the player who wants to squeeze a few more miles per hour out of his service motion.

Good video regarding how to generate high speed serve, but strongly believe video should have more content on other serve types. I believe that when I apply concepts learned from the video, I will see improvement in my serve technique and speed. I do believe the video will help my game.

On the other hand, I agree with another reviewer about annoying drum roll sound used excessively in the video -- wish that were completely eliminated. Also, wish video took several minutes to demonstrate serve variations and explain how to create a super slice or kick on serves. Lack of this additional instructional material on a relatively short video is disappointing.

This teaching video gives thorough and correct instruction for hitting one particular sort of tennis serve. The serve is successfully used by the very "biggest hitters" on both men's and women's tours. The fastest serves ever hit were hit in this way. On the women's tour, Dinara Safina and Maria Sharapova hit this style. Many of the biggest hitters on the men's side have hit this way: Richard Krajicek, Goran Ivanisevic---many of them. So, it represents very competent and thorough instruction on one type of serve. We could call this your "big first serve" or your "flat" serve, although no effective serve is truly "flat." It omits more than just very minimal comments about the slice and kick serves, which are very important themselves. So, even if we wish to accept this standard, it is an incomplete instruction. We won't be able to do whatever we want with the ball.

Several possible problems could be identified for this style of serving. It restricts the power that you can really produce with your legs. It puts a premium on balance. It aligns the body in a way that leaves quite low tolerances---not much margin for error at all. There isn't much difference, in this method, between dumping the ball in the net and pushing it long. So, it necessarily requires top timing from the serve. Because it puts a premium on balance, it leaves the server vulnerable to "bad patches" of serving when the rhythm goes off. This doesn't reflect as much the laxity of preparation or the poor coordination of the server. It is just the case that this style of serving leaves rather little margin of error. Most of us humans need more margin for error than that, especially if we're not among the tallest players.

In my opinion, there are two better sources of information about the serve. One is produced by Phil Dent, a verifiable big server of yesteryear---now a top teaching pro and father of fine tennis players, including Taylor Dent. The other is produced by Jim McLennan. These advocate the "other" style of serving, namely the "platform" serve. This is the style that Sampras and Roddick and Edberg use. It is recommended because it allows you to get "full use" out of your legs. It aids your balance---instead of overloading your balance. It leaves much greater margin for error. Consequently, it becomes possible---with lots of practice---to avoid "bad patches" of serving during a match. It is the capability to maintain a consistently very high level of serving all the time---forever and always---that makes Sampras tough. If someone else cranks the occasional extra 5 or 8 miles an hour---what does it matter, really? It's purely show time. It has nothing to do with winning a match. You won't be beaten by a 140 mph serve that hits once every seven games. You'll be beaten by a 125 mph serve that whips into the corner time after time after time after time. Ask Andre Agassi about that.

Both the (great) teaching material by Phil Dent and the (extremely good---wonderful) teaching material by McLennan are, in my opinion, much better guidance for young people up through varsity players at excellent universities. Both are unsatisfactory to me in the sense that I wanted them to give MUCH more information about the use and production of the "spinnier" serves, the slice and the kicker. Still, it is useful to get the mechanics right first. If you can hit these serves, you can certainly learn the spin serves, too. To me, the Dent/McLennan stuff is the indispensable and top quality serve instruction.

If Maria Sharapova moved her serving style to the Dent/McLennan (platform) style, she could easily go back to number 1. There is no reason she has to have a patchy serve---but she does.

Sonic Serve shows fast pace tennis serves via many slow motion clips with lines and text drawn over parts of the video to emphasize body part alignments, e.g. where the hip and knee cross the baseline, caution to avoid arching one's back, where racket acceleration should occur. In some cases, students are shown making mistakes in order to point out what to avoid.

Sonic Serve emphasizes creating topspin and forward momentum on the serve by jumping up and into the court from a pinpoint stance in which the front hip and knee slide forward across the baseline before the jump. With both feet next to each other on the ground and both shoulders back, the bent knees and coiled torso thrust the racket upwards. The hitting shoulder rises higher than the tossing shoulder and the primary racket acceleration is in an upward direction behind the torso. At contact, the server's head and tossing shoulder are still slightly ahead of the torso which is ahead of the hips. The emphasis on upward acceleration increases margin for error by generating topspin. For example, comparing the serve to a ground stroke, if you want hit a fast pace passing shot that lands inside the service box at the net player's feet, then you would need to generate topspin. In that sense, the serve makes me think of a super fast topspin passing shot.

Due to the faster speed, greater spin, and better hitting angle of a jumping serve, I definitely like the jumping serve presented in Sonic Serve better than the non-jumping serves presented in beginner videos, e.g. Consistent Tennis Wins III The Serve, Tennis Mantra - A Beginner's Guide to Learning Tennis.

For jumping serve videos, Sonic Serve has far superior production values than Pro Tennis Lessons "Ultimate Serve", such as slow motion, higher quality video, and effective use of graphics on slow motion sequences. I also found Sonic Serve more helpful than The Fundamentals of the Game: A Winning Serve, Professional Tennis Instruction and Lessons.

Of the 10 videos in The Nick Bollettieri DVD Collection: Complete 10xDVD set collects the Stroke Instruction Series and the Game Development Series (2008), I liked Sonic Serve, Tenacious Net Play, and Bollistic Backhand the best. I should have skipped the other 7 videos.

The target audience is probably intermediate or advanced tennis students who are taking lessons from a knowledgeable tennis pro.

Overall I was able to improve the speed and spin of my serves after the combination of watching this video and discussing serve techniques with others. I used Sonic Serve much like a textbook to study before class so that I had slow motion visualizations in mind and questions ready to ask in advance.

There is a very annoying drum roll sound that is very distracting and bothersome. A bit dull and