If we’re using this as the metric we can see that his per-second sprint has improved by around 100% since his introduction into professional tennis.
To understand this improvement we can break this down into three subcomponents: speed of attack, vertical velocity, and vertical acceleration.
Speed of Attack
Speed of attack is the ability to move quickly through the court at a speed that allows one to receive a return serve for a first strike on the other side of the net. In the professional game, speed is generally measured between 60 and 75mph (98-121kph).
In their last couple of matches the Williams’ have not been able to match or exceed this speed during their practice sessions. They have made it clear that this would be an issue. As far as I can tell, it’s just another aspect of the game they aren’t able to execute the same.
Vertical Velocity
This is primarily how much time the player can use vertical velocity – either up or down – in their serve as part of a technique known as the spin.
Suga Rap is known to be able to generate a lot of vertical velocity in the serve, however it’s really the amount of vertical energy that’s being used compared to how fast the player can generate the vertical force as it comes up towards the ball. This allows Suga Rap to generate enough vertical velocity to drive his opponents towards the ground on the second serve, while they’re still able to attack the ball and recover.
Vocabulary Breakdown
There a couple of very different terms associated with Suga’s technique and terminology within tennis. For the sake of this post I’m only going to be covering the main ones.
1) Spin
We all know that the ball has to be spinning towards you and towards your partner. It can’t be spinning towards you because if it were, a ball-in-air is an impossibility. Therefore the ball must be turning at a speed that you can take a very significant amount of time to get the ball into position.
The spin is what the ball is going towards the racket, the ball’s spinning towards its intended path, and the racket’s spinning towards the direction of the ball. You can see why there would be a very important element in how the ball should spin. If the ball wasn’t spun correctly, the spin-off and the spin-out of the ball would be completely ineffective. Suga’s spin is very important, especially if