Kayla Day – Solid service 3.0
As a wild-card entry, young Kayla Day (*99 / USA) have had a great run at the 2017 Indian Wells tournament. Here she won 2 main draw rounds (both matches against WTA top 100 players) to later narrowly lose only in a tough 3 set match against WTA #7 Garbine Muguruza (ESP). Left-handed Californian Kayla, daughter of a Czech mother and an American father, is former #1 in the Junior ITF rankings and 2016 Junior US.Open Champion. Her forehand and service can be considered as her biggest weapons.
The photos shown below are documenting Kayla’s service during the 2015 Orange Bowl, where she narrowly lost in a rainy and thus a couple of times interrupted finals to Bianca Andreescu (*00 / CAN). The very well developed essential elements of an efficient body energy driven service (=Service 3.0) are here mainly a well-controlled (stable) toss, excellent eye control of the ball, a good build-up of a tension in the body and a sound understanding of the targeted pronation channeling the stored body energy against the target in the first part of the follow through. Such a solid Service 3.0 is an excellent base for further growth and shows that good developmental technical work on the service was done with Kayla in the past. Just the quite big glenohumeral angle, mostly well above 130° (up to 110° is considered as safe for the shoulder) can be considered as a certain risk for the future.
To document that the practically perfect execution of certain elements was not by case, the key moments around the targeted pronation are shown several times.
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – ad side – 1 of 5 – concentration – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 5 – start – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 3 of 5 – targeted pronation = early follow through 1 with excellent eye control of the ball – the quite big glenohumeral angle well above 130° is good visible here – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 4 of 5 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 5 of 5 – asking the umpire to check the mark – the service was on the line! – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – deuce side – 1 of 4 – concentration – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 4 – approaching the impact with high elbow position and excellent eye control – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 3 of 4 – end of follow through 1 = targeted pronation, the position of the racket shows that this service was hit with a certain amount of topspin – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 4 of 4 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – deuce side – 1 of 2 – impact at highest possible point and with excellent eye control of the ball – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 2 – end of the follow through 1 = targeted pronation – the palm of the hitting arm is still pointing to the outside – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – ad side – 1 of 2 – targeted pronation = follow through 1 – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 2 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – ad side – 1 of 2 – impact at highest possible point and with excellent eye control – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 2 – end of follow through 1 = targeted pronation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – deuce side – 1 of 2 – targeted pronation = folow through 1 with excellent body control – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 2 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – ad side – 1 of 2 – perfect targeted pronation = follow through 1 – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 1st service in a match – 2 of 2 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 2nd service/topspin in a match – ad side – 1 of 2 – targeted pronation = follow through 1 – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
Kayla Day (*99 / USA) – 2nd service in a match – 2 of 2 – follow through 2 = relaxation – 2015 U18 Orange Bowl finals – Plantation, FL / USA
This article is just a partial analysis, further photos and more details to Kayla Day’s strokes as well as to strokes of many other top juniors and world-class players are available upon request at drmgb11(at)gmail.com
Photos (December 2015) & text (March 2017) copyright by Dr. Martin G. Baroch – no part of this article can be used for further publication without written permission from the copyright holder.
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