John Isner: The servebot prototype who helped change the rules of tennis | Acing It

[@tennisCharlzz]

In a different generation, Isner would have been a serve and volleyer. Back when Borg and Connors played, 6'5" was considered really tall. Players like Laver and Rosewall were 5'9" or shorter, and that wasn't seen as a liability. Karlovic came to net quite often because he lacked the training on his other strokes when he was young. Isner made the most of his height and had the mental toughness to win close tiebreaks. His work with Justin Gimelstob, who pushed Isner to play quick points, using a big forehand to finish off points after serve were huge helping him to win games when he had to hit a few second serves. Recall he was the first guy to push Rafa to five sets at Roland Garros. And that was clay.

[@moaningpheromones]

Different game with wood racquets. No-one got to find out how Borg would fare in the graphite era.

[@vicmulyk5775]

Look at Federer's ace stats for a "normal height human"! Incredible. John Isner indeed had beautiful serving technique! Those kickers!

[@Murmurrr]

his placement and racquet speed was incredible

[@davidfernandez8515]

​@@Murmurrrand his serve was unreadable

[@eadamic17]

John "7-6" Isner was always one of my favourite players. It was his marathon match against Mahut that really inspired me to start to play tennis back in 2010. 14 years later, I still play this sport every week.

[@emjay2045]

“7’6”” 🤣😂🤣😂🤣

[@disturbia1378]

Please do more tennis content ESPN!! 🙏🙏

[@stewpatterson1369]

this is a great video. As an aside, the bar graphs around 3:00 are "cheating" in the world of data visualization. It's considered misleading to just change the y-axis to start wherever you want to make the difference look bigger. It should be zero for an absolute value like a percentage.

[@Junieper]

This is not always true. While I agree that the graphic is misleading, you should not always start the y-axis at 0, even for percentages.

[@geemy9675]

@@Junieper especially in this context, to point out that a 9% difference is average is huge. after all the big 3 only won 54-55% of the points over their whole career, including the easy first rounds wins against much lower ranked players. playing against each other was much tighter.

[@Em4gdn1m]

Great video. Keep the tennis stuff coming.

[@hkmamba824]

Great quality video, thanks for the tennis content

[@DarrylHebbes]

Love Isner, amazing talent

[@abhishekvanenooru4959]

when i start to study these wonderful videos pop up and destroys my momentum

[@AnkitBhatiaat]

get an adblocker

[@Squatch24]

My mom and I were there at 7:08 bottom right!

[@guysloyan3457]

Brilliant video well made 👏👏

[@jacksonflynn4988]

It’s good to see Opelka returning to the tour, healthy.

[@K4R3N]

Opelka is back!

[@tucker3601]

Also worth pointing out the difference the surfaces make to hitting aces. It's significantly easier to hit aces on grass, due to the surfaces fast, low bounces, however grass only (unfortunately) makes up a small fraction of the ATP tour's events. Hard courts can either be on the faster or slower side, and in turn favor or mitigate big serves. So serve-bots really only dominate on grass and fast hard courts, which make up to maybe half of the tours venues. On clay its much harder to hit aces, and big servers lose essentially their entire advantage, which is why you never see big servers having much success on clay. Clay is about half of the tour's tournaments. Jarry's best service is clay, ironically his serve is not the best aspect of his game.

[@StewNWT]

And he beat Federer once in Davis cup. He beat each of the big 3.

[@possesedcake5422]

He was such a consistently good player, 2018 was his god season tho

[@cogito3141]

That Mahut dive :D

[@nicholaswilks580]

MORE TENNIS, ESPN

[@Superplayer_2]

I like this series

[@The_Great_One]

Quite a good tribute for Big John, IMO only behind Ivo as the greatest server ever.

[@ljhokk]

When it comes to servers Andy Roddick and Roger Feder are best servers lower than 190 cm.

[@matthewwilliams3827]

“Almost no one broke serve less than isner” that alone tells me if he was about 185cm instead, he’d not even have been a top 100 player, maybe not even top 300.

[@heinzii7834]

Survival of the fittest not the most competent it seems.

[@fp3977]

Maybe. It's a fact that he polished his serve to the point where he could compete with the top 10. His overall game may be mediocre in terms of top caliber players but when serving is 50% of the match, not a bad plan.

[@benmiller455]

lmao, what a compliment this video is 😂

[@blaynewilson1549]

Lost me after 30 seconds in when you say that "Tomas Berdych" and "Kevin Anderson" we two of the most recent prolific servers.

[@willhopson1277]

Haah I commented on this too. The dude making the video is living in 2017

[@AP0CALYPSY]

253 km/h that is about 157 mp/h. 253 mph is not possible

[@daehseo]

He is a great server, but I would prefer Pete Sampras' serves especially his second serve any time.

[@bonzwah1]

always tough to compare serve in isolation. you cannot separate isner's serve with his height. I would much rather have pete sampras's serve and body, because he could move well on the court in addition to having an amazing serve. but just comparing serves, isner definitely has a more effective serve. its just that pete had a laughably superior FOLLOWUP to the serve.

[@AnkitBhatiaat]

Funnily enough Isner has a better second server win percentage than pete

[@possesedcake5422]

Isner might be the last ever successful serve bot, I think the return game has just gotten way to good compared to the serve.

[@quentinhirschfeld9382]

Yu assume that tennis fans are all happy about the fifth set being a tie break in all grand slams now, well, you're wong. The epicness of not knowing how many games would be played took a lot of the excitement i have for that kind of matches and reduced the prestige of best of 5. No more 2013 Djokovic-Wawrinka, no more 2018 Isner-Anderson (it wasn't a bad match by any mean), no more Roddick-Federer 2009,...

[@red4666]

I’d rather have Federer’s accuracy.

[@hristi]

Roger being 3rd 🐐

[@Billygoatboy47]

POWER!!!

[@user-eh1vv2fd9c]

Shelton 149mph or somethin?

[@jadawin1137]

He serves just fast but lacks both the placement and consistency. That's why he gets broken all the time.

[@willhopson1277]

Why is this being posted now? I love isner but he hasn’t been relevant in the sport for almost 5 years now?? This same guy did a video on jokers serve and the improvement he made. He improved his serve like 10 years ago.

[@boomshakalaka8567]

Be grateful men's tennis gets covered at all on this network. They usually only cover sports with prominent black players.

[@willhopson1277]

@@boomshakalaka8567 I was more thinking women’s sports lol.

[@BoxOfOranges84]

A tennis fan skeptical of ESPN promoting tennis. You people live to be agitated

[@tsujimasen]

Goran?

[@abhishekvanenooru4959]

opelka is siddanth

[@Todeon]

Karlovic is the p4p servebot

[@bonzwah1]

not even p4p. he has a higher career ace% than isner, so in terms of serve effectiveness by itself, karlovic is the best server of all time. I would even argue that karlovic has worse movement, worse forehand, worse backhand, and worse everything except volleys really compared to isner, so that just makes him even more of a serve bot haha.

[@agusyustinus1282]

Big serve with no grand slam tittle😂

[@matthewwilliams3827]

If he was about 180-185cm I doubt he’d even have been in the top 100 or win any tour title.

[@joehardisty7414]

It's about time the ATP remove the second serve to do away with servebots like Isner, speed up the game and get players into more rallies.

[@bonzwah1]

i don't disagree, but its too dramatic of a change and will likely never happen. far more likely is that they impose a time limit between first and second serve, so that players can't take like 20 seconds between first and second serve.

[@dagfinissocool]

you're saying 1 fault equals point lost? That is the dumbest thing I ever heard it would remove their ability to go all in on first serve and quality of play would go down

[@joehardisty7414]

@@dagfinissocool Firstly, players could still go all in on their first serve, just with an increased risk of losing the point. Why is it a good thing that players can go all in on their first serve without any risk anyway? Secondly, how would the quality of play go down? You can't just come to a ridiculous conclusion like that without at least providing a reason. If you'd take more than 2 seconds to think about it, you'd realise the quality of play would actually go up because players would have to rely on a lot more skills than just a powerful serve to win the point.

[@AnkitBhatiaat]

@@joehardisty7414 You're supposed to have an advantage serving. All this would do is further devolve modern tennis into 10 hour baseline rallies.

[@matthewwilliams3827]

Yeah this servebotting is such a bs part of tennis, makes it so boring because I know without that serve some of these players would be like 100+ places lower on the rankings…

[@cvcfoundation8413]

And his career sucked

[@markburnham7512]

Isner is a one trick pony, and it's not enough. Never was.

[@nofacenation5260]

How do you not win a slam with the best serve ever. Says more about his overall game Most boring player of all time. Legit just have to win one point on return in a tie breaker and it’s over

[@Bowl849]

Poor mobility. Would be interesting to see what he would have been like if he had someone like Medvedevs mobility

[@Vinson-Tran]

Agree with Bowl849. Being tall indeed comes with some drawback. I imagine Medvedev wouldn’t even move as well as he does if he grew +4” to match isner’s height, but nonetheless Med’s mobility at 6’6” (~2m) is insane

[@skychaos87]

@@Vinson-Tran Not just the height, the weight too. Isner is heavy for his height, which is probably what gives him power too. If he loses weight to the same ratio as Medvedev then he could move faster, but with lesser power too.

[@joehardisty7414]

It's about time the ATP remove the second serve to do away with servebots like Isner, speed up the game and get players into more rallies.

[@SharkAcademy]

Because only .00001% of people have the athletics required to be at the top of sports. Even those who are number 1 in college don’t make it. He didn’t have a lot of what the top players have, but he had height, and the best serve and that carried him to be able at least be competitive and play along side the best

[@will.davlin]

wool socks to bed=20% mood increase the next day comparatively🟣