Hal v. Stice, continued: the serve reverse-engineered from still photos
Stice wound up to serve so stiff, his motion so sprocketed and serial, that the journalist told deLint Stice looked to her as if he’d learned to serve by studying still photos of the motion’s different stages, no offense intended.
Context
The match-anatomy resumes on Stice's serve, and the outsider's-eye description nails what E.T.A. drilling produces: a motion "so sprocketed and serial" it looks like Stice "learned to serve by studying still photos of the motion’s different stages." The serve has been assembled frame by frame out of positions, so it reads as a flip-book rather than a flow — the body built up out of discrete taught stages instead of grown into one continuous act.