Not sure this quite the right place for this topic as it could apply to women as well ... but here goes.

Does anyone remember Roscoe Tanner (of Gnome Drive, Look Out Mountain, Tennessee, currently residing in a jail somewhere in the USA)? When he served, he would strike the ball as it was still rising from the toss.

Does (did) anyone else do this? I've never noticed others but some of the more technically minded may have. How did Tanner managed to serve so well? I remember spending an hour trying to serve off a rising ball when I was a teenager and concluding it wasn't possible!

Didn't Cash remodel his action to do this at some point ?? Vaguely remember something about putting less strain on his back when recovering from injury. Not sure about this, though.

I remember one year at Wimbledon when Lendl was nearly knocked out in an early round upset by an Italian player called Paolo Cane. I think that he hit his serve on the up – the commentators were talking about it and how difficult it was to do and how likely his serve was to go during the pressure moments. Sure enough he lost the match at its business end – I think they went to 5 sets.

I remember that everything happened very quickly on his serve and he seemed to be crouched up and to hit the ball when it was much lower than other players did.

It must be a nightmare of timing – you have to get it dead right and don’t have so much time to see the ball.

Just checked on the ATP site, and their H2H shows it was 2nd round in 1987: http://www.atptennis.com/5/en/players/head...playernum2=C012

Tanner was the big server of his era though wasn't he, so he must have been getting something right.

Didn't know he was in jail :blink:

He was released earlier this year but has just started a 43 day jail term, relating to non payment of child support. He also has convictions for various forms of fraud (for example, he fraudulently wrote a check for a boat which he used as collateral for a loan, when the cheque bounced the owner took back the boat only to have the bank impound it!) He was also extradited from Germany at one stage.

A sad end.

he was a good server but his hitting the ball perfectly flat on his serve was the key for his speed serve rather than the toss in my view which indeed could take the players by surprise at first, but something we can get used to. He applied zero spin on the ball, so it was all pace and the players then were not used to that kind of pace...and they had to retrieve with small frames too, so that was a good advantage on grass were the bounces were never the same.

I am glad Borg held on and managed to beat him in this great final.

Comchita Martinez also used to hit the ball on the rise,but added side spin to that dismal serve of hers.GOD it was painful,but it got her a purple pin! :D