Hal v. Stice: the serve as frieze and bad animation
The Darkness’s service motion was in the McEnroe-Esconja tradition, legs splayed, feet parallel, a figure off an Egyptian frieze, side so severely to the net he’s almost facing away. [...] Stice started his service-motion motion in little segments—it looks a little like bad animation—then grimaced, tossed, pivoted netward and served it with a hard flat spang way out to Hal’s forehand, pulling Hal wide.
Context
Match-anatomy at full resolution starts with the serve broken into its parts. Stice's motion is caught as a still — "a figure off an Egyptian frieze, side so severely to the net he's almost facing away" — and then as a stutter: he starts it "in little segments—it looks a little like bad animation," before the whole thing releases into "a hard flat spang" that pulls Hal wide. The body's most complex single act gets slowed to frieze-frames and frames-per-second, the way E.T.A. teaches you to see a stroke.