Is there a maximum speed a player (6’ tall) could serve the ball, and it still be a legal shot?
I started wondering this while watching the US. Open and seeing serves up around 140mph. When I was younger I remember players serving around 110-120mph. Could they get faster still?
Top spin will put the ball into the opposite court, pretty much no matter how fast it’s traveling (short of combustion speed, I suppose). The question is, how hard can a person hit it? Don’t know that we can put a hard limit on that.
The limiting factors are going to be:
As long as the balls are standardized or regulated by the tennis community, and as long as most tennis matches are played below, say, 1 mile above sea level, then the first two factors will remain basically static. It appears that the International Tennis Federation assigns power ratings to rackets and so the elasticity of collision probably has an upper bound limited by current materials science technology. They also prohibit anything that dynamically alters the moment of inertia of the racket, so swinging weights inside the handle can’t be used to help. I assume a lightweight racket is advantageous, and reducing mass while retaining stiffness is also a materials science problem.
Last but probably most important is the human factor. I don’t know how fast a human can make his serve arm move, but there is probably an upper bound if you assume very light bones and very dense muscles swinging an extremely lightweight racket. You might look at world champions in other older disciplines (martial arts? boxing?) to find examples of the most power someone could put behind a downward swing like a serve stroke.
Also a factor is the ergonomics of the traditional tennis serve, versus one that would theoretically have a maximum speed but be practically useless as a competition serve.
A lot of the typical tennis serve is structured to maximize consistency, trading off some of the speed as a result. A pro will probably have at least 5 different serves in their bag-of-techniques (fast first serve, kick serve, old-reliable topspin second serve, etc) that all have slightly different mechanics. One could probably concoct a record-breaking speed serve faster than any of the typical pros use, but still have it be worthless to use if it were only able to succeed 1% of the time.
This speaking from one who played in college and never could master that damn reversed kick serve.
A friend and I were wondering why only the serves are timed with the radar gun. Those ground strokes are pretty wicked, too. About how fast do some of those babies travel? I’m guessing some of those two handed shots must get up there near the century mark, don’t they? Anyone know?
Andy Roddick holds the record of 153.5 mph serve in an official match.
I’m not sure how fast someone has served outside a match.
Another question: at what point in their travel are serves clocked? I guess their peak velocity comes right after they’re struck.
The current speed record is held by American Andy Roddick. I’ve seen his best effort listed as 153 miles per hour (it came during a regulation match and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records), although I vaguely remember some commentators wondering if the radar gun was being a little “generous” that day. The other record serves are all in the 150 mph range, though, and Roddick has the record even if that one doesn’t count.
CBS and USA clocked a few returns of serve during the US Open. I saw a few that were at 103 and 104 mph. I’m not sure they’ve ever clocked regular groundstrokes.