Measure speed of your tennis serve from your iPhone. Really? Really.  No radar attachment, just a very clever sound-based app that records the impact of your serve, then starts a timer. It then records the impact of where the ball stops, and stops the timer. You calibrate the app with the serving distance… and voila – a virtual radar gun.

Lady reading a book at Walnut Creek Bart – you couldn’t have sat in a better position for me to capture your x-stitch that you need to SNIP!

You in that beige trench coat at the Montgomery Bart station – snip it, girl!! That tight wrinkly coat is even looking like a wedgie

I make my analogy similar to golf, when most beginners don’t understand ‘hitting down’ on the ball with their irons. Most players look at an iron with it’s lofted face and think, “Hey, I need to scoop the ball.”  But when you talk to the pros, it’s “Of course I hit down on the ball… even with my driver.”  And with tennis, most pros don’t even know they pronate during the serve, it’s just how they’ve learned to hit the ball.  A tennis pro I had when I was a kid tried teaching us pronation… I don’t think I understood for over 20 years. When I tried, the ball spun the opposite way, but learned now it was all about the timing.

Here are illustrations on what I’m speaking about:

A shot I took of Stepanek after a serve – check out how his palm is facing out, away from his face.

Roddick – after impact, palms facing away from face.

And most of the top pros (Fed) still pronate on the 2nd kick serve, as well as both ad/deuce sides. It’s all the same motion, but an adjustment in timing of when the face of the racquet makes contact with the ball. The rest of the players end up with a follow thru similar to the one below after going over the top of the ball to produce the kick. I captured dozens of shots of both 1st and 2nd serve to find very similar motions and pronation. After going through them I really couldn’t tell which ones were 1st or 2nd serves.

Even with baseball, a slow-mo of Roger Clemens throwing a slider showed not a follow thru of a snapped wrist, but pronation of the arm – ever so slightly.

And even with a volleyball serve there is pronation:

And back to tennis:

Agassi serving to the deuce court, you would think his racquet would point towards the court he’s firing at, but – no.

And the Djokester – 2nd serve to the deuce court:

Comparing with 1st serve to deuce court (below):

Both serves, palms facing out.

Most beginners wonder why they often serve better to the ad side, and it’s usually because the face of the racquet naturally follows through to the ad side of the court, which creates a more penetrating shot because you’re actually pronating for a change.

Now that I have you slightly convinced you need to learn pronation, here are a couple of drills to help learn pronation.

A Richard Mille timepiece weighing about 20 grams appeared on Rafael Nada’s wrist during the 2010 French Open that, seemingly, gave him the speed, precision strokes, and power he needed to win, features synonymous  with the  F1 cars from which the watch was inspired.

Nada’s new sponsor, Richard Mille, names this $525,000 timepiece the RM 027 Tourbillon. Only 50 copies of this watch will be made.

What makes this watch cool is the various display configurations you can select, including a negative display effect. 16 different display options.

Black overcoat… pretty new… X-stitch bottom center that needed a little snip-snip if ya know what I mean.