Serves
The serve lays the foundation of a point. No matter how skilled a player is, it’s hard to beat an opponent without a quality first touch. Just as in a gambling game like poker, where choosing the right starting hands is the most important decision, you will vastly improve your game if you fine tune your serve.
Basics of Serve
The fundamentals of serve starts with “ The four Bs” base, balance, back-scratch position and ball toss. To achieve a correct base, your feet should be shoulder’s width apart with your left foot at an angle towards the target box and your right foot parallel to the baseline.
Flat Serve:
Once you establish a good base, focus on the location of the ball toss. The ball toss should be at the one o’clock position slightly in front of you. Practice getting the ball into this position before trying the entire service motion. Your hip should rotate while trying the service motion, look at the pictures below.
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Bend your knees to generate more power to the serve.
Slice Serve:
Slice serve is an arm serve, so you will not have the hip and shoulder rotation that you have in the flat serve. You will also turn your grip over a little more counter clockwise. The ball is tossed at noon, and you swing up to the ball visualizing a nail in the sky. In doing this you are trying to hit the ball on its side which generates the slice to make it kick. While the follow through of the flat serve is across your body the slice serve is going to be on the other side of your body. The feet should be stationary with a weight shift from the back foot to the front foot when striking the ball.
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Topspin Serve:
The topspin serve is similar to the slice serve in many aspects. Throw the ball toss at noon, and a little closer to your body. If it lands it should hit you on the forehead. This is going to be an all arm serve. You also finish on the same side of your body as well. Swing up at the ball and push the racquet through the ball. The key thing is to generate as much spin as possible and that is achieved by attacking the ball aggressively when tossing it in the air.
The key to service power is the racquet head speed and not swinging hard at the ball. In otherwords, swinging quickly at the ball rather than trying to muscle the ball.
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Videos
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June 25th, 2008 at 10:47 am
great site, thaks
June 26th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
is this ok for left handers too?
July 29th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Tried this yesterday and it worked awsome 9 aces and ive never aced anyone before.
March 4th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
thank you! i just joined JV tennis at my school and was looking for some help (cuz im only in seventh and ill be playing with 8-10 graders XD)