Stroke Lab

This is a research site. Its purpose is to stimulate and support discussion and exploration of principals put forward in Tennis Without Talent to explain the eerie success enjoyed creatures of talent at taming the vicissitudes of the game of tennis. I used avatars extensively in that website to illustrate stroking principals. The avatars are flexible and accurate - their strokes are precisely modeled from videos of the best pros in the game, but true motion transfer from video to avatar is a dicey process that lends itself to the bias of the modeler as to how strokes work. Conversely, actual video may obfuscate, conceal or confuse but it does not lie. Therefore, in anticipation of a certain amount of controversy or even rage over my attempt to overturn the conventional wisdom of tennis, I felt that a site that displays the videos on which the strokes of the avatars are based would stimulate brisk debate and lead to a better understanding of the magic that is A-level tennis.

These videos have been heavily edited and annotated from the originals for clarity, but not in any way that would affect the apparent timing or sequencing of the strokes. They are referenced from the Tennis Without Talent site and each one, where possible, references back to the original Online video sources. I encourage everyone to follow those references back to their sources as many can be very helpful when trying to unravel the mysteries of this game.