By Randy Walker
@TennisPublisher
Marta Kostyuk is one of the most entertaining players to watch on the WTA Tour. She moves around like the gymnast she once was doing a floor routine while slamming 100 mile per hour forehand and backhands for winners.
While she is known to throw in an underhand serve now and then as a strategy, her traditional service motion is a sight to behold because of its unconventional route that her racquet takes to get to the trophy position to launch her delivery into the court. Kostyuk starts her service motion with her right arm raised, but with her wrist bent and her racquet pointing down to the ground as her left arm throws up the toss. She then bends her wrist back and “slings” her racquet up into a perfect trophy position like a whip and then catapults her racquet into the ball for a powerful service delivery.
“No one would actually really teach this,” said Lynne Rolley, the CEO of the Professional Tennis Registry (PTR), the world-wide tennis teaching and coaching organization, said of the Kostyuk service motion. “It’s just something she’s figured out probably, and it’s just more comfortable. But she gets to the right position, which is very interesting.”
“It’s a quirky start that gets her to the right trophy position and the right service delivery,” continued Rolley, the former long-time director of women’s tennis for the U.S. Tennis Association’s Player Development Program. “And it’s not something anyone would teach. It’s her own style and it works for her.”
Rolley speculated that Kostyuk probably has had this service motion since she was a young player and she stuck with it and feels most comfortable hitting a serve this way. “Perhaps at one point, she was just too stiff, and this was a way for her to really get some racket acceleration by just letting it be pretty floppy,” she said.
The most important fundamentals of a good service motion, Rolley said, are good balance, good rotation, a good trophy position with your racquet behind your back ready to be launched into the tossed ball. And the resulting serve needs to produce good placement and accuracy, with good power and with consistency.
“And if you have all of that, it’s not worth changing some of these quirks,” Rolley said.
“You have to have the fundamentals,” she continued. “You have to have the technique, or you won’t have balance, you won’t have racket acceleration. You won’t have power, you won’t have consistency. So the style doesn’t matter as long as the technique is sound. The style can’t interfere with the technique.”
Many standout players will not have picture perfect strokes, but they do what they need to do to execute the shot the best they can. Frances Tiafoe’s forehand is quirky as was the Jim Courier backhand. Jay Berger, who serves with Rolley for the PTR as a International Board Member, was also known for his unusual service motion where he started his serve already in the trophy position.
“He’s the first person to say, ‘I had a very different serve motion,’ however he delivered a very good serve,” said Rolley of Berger. “So, again, there’s style and there’s technique.”
Discover more from World Tennis Magazine
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.