Pro Tennis Lessons "Ultimate Serve"

Rating:
Summary: Einstein would object
Review: The skills and ideas demonstrated in this video constitute basically complete and correct knowledge for the low to mid-level player. So, a junior player twelve and under or fourteen and under might very well profit from seeing these skills demonstrated properly. In the same way, a very low level club player might correct his form in this way. The author claims to have simplified this material so that everyone can do it. His claim is true, but misleading. He has simplified it so much that a part of the effectiveness is eliminated.

The author is quite powerfully built in the upper body. He has very strong shoulders and arms, good hand-eye coordination, and quite excellent timing through the ball. For these reasons, he can consistently hit quite a powerful and crisp serve with sub-optimal body mechanics. In actual fact, people of less powerful natural build who emulated his form very exactly could well end up with a shoulder as sore as poor Pammy Shriver's. His own body mechanics put a lot of stress on the shoulder. While he says quite clearly that the leg action is important, he under-demonstrates the details of coordinating the legs. He himself does not use the legs as effectively as he could and should, at least in these demonstrations.

The DVD is under produced. While of a little better quality than your home video cam, it is basically a filming of a chatty pseudo-lesson the author is giving. There is a lot of repetitive chat ("brush Up the back of the ball, UP the back of the ball"). The skills as he demonstrates them would make him a good low level college player or a decent middle of the road club player. They would not let him threaten to play at a high spot on a good college team (e.g. Pepperdine or UCLA). They would not let him threaten to take his own club championship very often unless, of course, he can produce on court better form than he demonstrates in the video. (He probably can.)

Finally, the editing is sloppy. We watch quite a number of successive examples when he pushes the ball long on serve, dumps a couple straight into the net, and misses his mark consistently. We would learn better if we saw super-slow-motion of the finest servers performing at the peak of their skills. The notion of whether the author has the form to compete for his own club championship is unknown from this video. Certainly this is not it. If you want to perform as an elite junior or tune your game to play at a good college, this isn't your ticket. If your skills are substandard, this is one of many places (all more or less equally good) where you can actually obtain basically decent body mechanics.

Things should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. This is made simpler than you will need to get your place on the team at UCLA.

Rating:
Summary: Best Serve Information!
Review: This DVD helped my Serve more than the lessons I have taken trying to improve it. Taking lessons can be frustrating because some coaches are not great teachers and I have walked away wondering, what did he say? Not so with this DVD from Pro James Jensen. He is an exceptional teacher and I quickly understood every thing he taught on improving my Serve. The improvements I made with my slice and kick serves were immediate and I was able to Ace more than I ever have before in my weekly club matches. All I can say is this is a great learning tool and I will be purchasing more from Coach Jensen's Tennis DVD series.