Now that the clay court and grass court seasons are over, professional tennis is in the midst of the hard court season - a season that seems to bring out the hardest serves of the year.
Whether it's the hard courts or the hot weather, the radar guns will be smoking over the next few weeks.
With Andy Roddick continually setting the fastest serve record - up to the current 151 mph - the question has been asked: Can a serve be hit too hard to return?.
When Roddick hit one of his record-setting serves at 149 mph, nobody remembers that Andre Agassi returned it safely. So, in the future, will there be a time a serve can be hit so hard a returner doesn't have the time to react quickly enough to get a racquet on the ball? A lot of that answer depends on whether the returner has to move for the ball or not.
In the mid-1970s, Sports Illustrated conducted an experiment to measure the reaction time of several NHL goalies when required to make a save by moving their glove, stick, leg or body. Assuming tennis players don't have better reflexes than hockey goalies - a goalie's stick can be compared to a tennis player's racquet - comparisons can be made.
In the experiment, the goalies' reaction time ranged from 0.26 seconds to 0.29 seconds. If the body had to be moved, the times ran between 0.56 seconds and 0.63 seconds. For the comparison, measure the time it takes for a tennis ball to travel from the opponent's racquet to the receiver's baseline.
Sports Illustrated produced a table of reaction times. Using that table, any serve hit less than 120 mph requires 0.60 seconds to reach the baseline, and can be returned even if the serve is hit so the opponent has to move to return it. If a serve comes at 149 mph it takes 0.47 seconds to reach the opposing baseline, which is enough time to react - as Agassi demonstrated. However, he didn't have to move. Any serve hit harder than 120 mph hit away from the receiver will be impossible for the receiver to get a racquet on the ball.
One solution is for the receiver to back up behind the baseline to return the serve, but this also gives the server more angle out wide or down the middle, so the receiver has to move more and is more vulnerable if they do that.
Looking at the table, a serve would have to be hit more than 165 mph for a receiver not to have enough reaction time to get a racquet on the ball, even if it's hit directly at him.
But not even Roddick has a 165 mph serve in him. At least not in the foreseeable future.
Other than being interesting information, the message to those of us who can't hit 149 mph serves is placement is more important than power.
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