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With Serena Williams set to take on her sister Venus in the highly anticipated U.S. Open quarterfinal, here’s a look at the remarkable ball toss the world’s No. 1 ranked tennis player uses that helps disguise her serves. Photo: Getty

Flushing, N.Y.

When Serena Williams visited her father, Richard, this summer, they did what they always do: watched tapes of her tennis matches. During one, an ESPN graphic about Williams’s serve appeared on the screen. When she tossed the ball, the graphic showed, it followed a similar path each time, and she made contact with it in nearly the same spot. Her contact points mostly overlapped in a neat cluster, while those of her opponent,Maria Sharapova, were scattered. Williams was surprised by her consistency.

“I was like, ‘Really? I didn’t know anything about that!’” Williams said in an interview in Toronto this summer. “I never thought about it.”

If the 33-year-old Williams wins the U.S. Open, she will become the first player since Steffi Graf in 1988 to win all four Grand Slam singles tournaments in a season. She would also tie Graf at 22 career major titles, the most in the Open era, which began in 1968. She won’t do it unless her serve clicks, like it started to do in her fourth-round victory on Sunday against 20-year-old American Madison Keys.

One thing Williams won’t have to worry about: A ball toss that’s reliable, elegant and unorthodox.

At the 2015 U.S. Open, Serena Williams is attempting to win her 22nd Grand Slam championship, tying her with Steffi Graf. Margaret Smith Court holds the all-time record with 24.

Number of Grand Slam titles since Serena turned pro at the age of 14

Sources: Wimbledon via Guardian.co.uk; Roland Garros; U.S. Open; Australian Open

“She definitely has one of the best tosses of all time,” said Rick Macci, the technique expert who worked with a young Williams and her sister Venus at his Florida academy.

Williams’s toss is unusual. Most instructors, including Macci, ask players to hold the ball with their fingertips and release it after the arm extends (the motion is more lift than toss). Williams has mastered the lift, but she holds the ball lower in her hand and rolls it off her fingertips. Watch the ball toss of Roger Federer and notice how little the ball spins. When Williams tosses, the ball spins a lot, which seemingly would make the toss harder to control.

ENLARGE

On her serve, Serena Williams holds the ball lower in her hand than most pros and rolls the ball off her fingertips. PHOTO: EDUARDO MUNOZ/ACTION IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

“Look at a picture of Serena tossing the ball, and you will see how relaxed she is,” said her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou. “If you are completely relaxed, you can toss a ball straight with spin. You can do anything.”

Williams served poorly in her second and third-round matches at the U.S. Open. In the first three rounds of Wimbledon this year, her serve contact points were within 7 inches of each other in height, according to ESPN. Through three rounds at the U.S. Open, the range was 19 inches. SAP, which analyses data for the women’s WTA tour, looked at Williams’s serve in six WTA events last year. Her contact point was within eight inches.

Mouratoglou said the rest of Williams’s serve mechanics have been the problem at the U.S. Open, not her ball toss. He said Williams has been fine-tuning her technique in practice.

“It was just a question of timing, the timing was not right,” he said. “The moment she was hitting the ball, she was falling down.”

The tennis ball toss seems simple but is, in fact, maddening. For every exceptional ball tosser—14-time Grand Slam singles champion Pete Sampras had a beauty, as did former Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic—there’s a pro who struggles with it. Ana Ivanovic’s wayward tosses contributed to her drop in the rankings after she reached No. 1 in the world in 2008. At the 1998 U.S. Open, a frustrated Andre Agassi mimicked the errant ball tosses of his opponent, Karol Kucera.

“It isn’t easy—it should be, but it actually isn’t,” said Lindsay Davenport, the former No. 1 who coaches Keys. “It’s your non-dominant arm.”

Macci said Williams’s toss is so dependable because she releases the ball as she moves forward.

“A lot of other people, there’s a lot of herky-jerkiness going on,” Macci said. “With Serena, it’s like there’s an egg in her hand and she places it on a shelf.”

Williams’s ball toss helps her disguise her serves. Many players will toss the ball a bit behind them when they want to brush up on the ball and generate topspin, or kick. Williams hits all her serves—her flatter hard ones, kick serves and slices—from the same toss. Her opponents are left to guess. Against Keys, Williams closed out the set with a surprise second serve. Instead of spinning the ball to Keys’s backhand, she hit it 99 miles an hour in the middle of the box, to Keys’s forehand. Keys returned the ball long.

Williams is also the master of the timely serve. In this year’s Australian Open final, she closed out the match with an ace—until the chair umpire announced that the ball had hit the net. Williams hit another ace to win.

Williams has hit 498 aces in 52 matches this season, according to the WTA, more than any of her rivals. Coming into the Open she also led the tour in service games winning percentage and percentage of break points saved.

“When you finally get the break point, you know she’s going to serve an ace,” said Ivanovic, who has lost nine of her 10 meetings with Williams.

Macci still has worries about Williams’s serve. He said she seemed to be rushing on her second serve this summer and swinging too early, before her legs had time to drive her up toward the ball. Even after Williams served six aces against Keys without facing a break point, Macci wasn’t convinced that her timing was back to normal.

“She still has the best serve ever, but her tempo has changed,” he said.

Williams will play her sister Venus in Tuesday night’s quarterfinals.

In marquee matches, Williams said this summer, she serves best when she just tosses the ball and goes after it.

“When I think too much, I don’t serve well,” she said. “When I just say, ‘Serena just hit the ball and serve,’ that’s when I serve really well.”

Ohio State players sing Carmen Ohio
The Ohio State football team sings Carmen Ohio after beating Virginia Tech 42-24.
Posted by The Columbus Dispatch on Monday, September 7, 2015

The Ohio State football team sings Carmen Ohio after beating Virginia Tech 42-24.

Cardale Jones starts at quarterback for Ohio State

Cardale Jones started at quarterback for No. 1 Ohio State in the season opener against Virginia Tech on Monday.

That ended months of speculation about the quarterback battle for the Buckeyes and coach Urban Meyer. Last week, Meyer said he was still debating if both quarterbacks would play in the opener.

"There's a chance you'll see both tonight," Meyer said on ESPN before the game. "Throughout the 2015 season they're both gonna play."

MORE: OSU-VT live blog | Linemakers pick | Numbers that Matter.

Jones led Ohio State to wins against Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship and Alabama and Oregon in the first College Football Playoff. Barrett set a Big Ten record with single-season 45 total touchdowns last season before suffering a fractured ankle in the regular-season finale against Michigan.

The defending national champions lost to Virginia Tech 35-21 on Sept. 6, 2014.

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