Went up against a weird serve today

[Zachol82]

I was hitting at my local park earlier today and a random player came up asking if I'd play a match with him. Naturally, I said yes.

As we were warming up, he feeds the ball by letting it go and hitting it with the racquet before it bounces as oppose to a bounce-feed. That's cool, I didn't think anything of it, since that's how I feed too; I find that I can feed "nicer" and more accurately this way.

Anyhow, once the match started, he served in this manner as well...Did I get aced? Definitely. That first serve caught me off guard since I was expecting a normal service motion, not a feed motion. He didn't ace me again after that, but he was very consistent with his serves and surprisingly has a lot of control on it.

If I have to describe it in other words, it's like someone hitting a forehand from their shoulder height, that was how he was serving, tossing the ball to his shoulder height and kind of hit a forehand off of it.

My tip? Expect the unexpected I guess.

[Kurte954]

There's a USTA Pro Circuit tourny at a club in my area. Last year I watched the women's final and one of the girls hit the 2nd serve as a forehand every time. I was surprised; I didn't think I'd ever see that outside of the recreational players. I can't remember for sure if she won or not, but I think she did.

[rkelley]

Might be a shoulder issue.

[syc23]

I played against a work colleague recently and even though he has been playing a least a couple of years at his local club, he had a really strange service where he throws the ball up just in front of him and volleys it over the net.

He adds a decent amount of topspin and on the surface we were playing on that day (indoor carpet), it was surprisingly effective. It looks really stupid but if it works for him then good for him.

[Passion4Tennis]

Yeah, that does sound like an unusual serve. I've faced a few people at my local park that had really strange looking motions. Something along the lines of this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT714mG17bA
Not flamboyant looking like this one, but still odd. To the point where I was so puzzled by their motion, it was difficult to concentrate on the ball.