Ball toss location for flat serve

[Pirc Defense]

I recently had a lesson and asked the instructor why I couldn't serve with any pace, as I feel I'm fit and strong enough to do so. I relayed the message that I have (or had, anyway) a very strong throwing arm.

He told me that for my first, flat serve, that I'm throwing the ball too much directly in front of me, instead of 45 degrees from my body. In other words, if the baseline represented a line at 0 degrees, and directly towards the net is 90 degrees, then I would toss the ball too much towards 90, and not enough towards 0. He said I needed 45 degrees, which equates to a foot or so in front of me, and a foot or so to the right of me.

I do seem to get more pace this way, but when I watch on tv, or even watch other players live, it seems they don't toss the ball so far to the right. They seem to almost toss the ball to something approaching 90 degrees.

What's the skinny?

[aj_m2009]

I toss the ball almost directly in front of me and I can get good pace. To me it sounds kinda like this instructor is a fruit. But the toss obviously isn't the only thing that helps with pace, there is the knee bend, jumping into the ball and not just jumping straight up, along with a few other things.

[tom-selleck]

i noticed federer didn't throw the ball to one o'clock (i'm lefty serve so want to make sure i get it right for a right hander). federer throws it left across the baseline a little.... and the pete sampras video i got was the same...... the throwing to one o'clock is the way i thought you were supposed to do it.

[bhaskart]

Firstly here is a link to a previous theread on this topic that will help
http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?postid=339534#poststop

One of the links that Marius posted as a reply on that thread shows toss placements - that one actually shows the toss for a flat serve to be more like 70 degrees.

In any case, I understand your comment about watching pros on tv since I tend to get the same feeling. One factor that might be skewing our observation is that the pros have a knee bend thrown into their service motion - so their upperbody is leaning back a bit - perhaps the angle needs to be seen with reference to this??
Also, the pros try to keep their toss at one place (so that they don't telegraph the kind of serve they are going to attempt). So they probably adapted their swings to be able to hit a variety of serves from the same toss - so the advice from coaches/forums/books might not match directly with the pros in some instances.

[tom-selleck]

bhaskart, i agree with everything you said, especially the huge bend for tennis pro's, that us 4.0's either can't or shouldn't be doing.

i'll read the link, thank you!!!