Holding the racquet with your off hand pre-serve?

[mj01]

After years of playing, I just realized that I'm resting the racquet on the last 3 fingers of my off hand while going into my service motion. I really never thought about this before, but it suddenly hit me that I was doing it. And it now feels very unnatural not to do it.

I hold the ball between my index finger and thumb, near the top of the throat, and use the the other three fingers to hold the racquet up. As I go into the service motion, I pretty much drop the racquet from that slot, and bring all the off hand fingers into contact with the ball for the toss.

Anyone else do this? Any coaches on here feel one way or the other about it? I really can't say if it effects my toss- my toss isn't anywhere near as consistent as I would like, but I don't know if that's due to general competence (or lack thereof :D ), or this specific habit of mine. So any thoughts are appreciated.

[D-man]

I do it... I never really gave it a thought. Think it might hinder toss consistency?

[mj01]

Ok, I'm not alone.

The toss consistency issue was why I brought it up. I don't think its a big deal, but it might cause you to pull your toss hand back with your racquet during the service motion- I think I do this occasionally. I've also noticed that when my toss goes wrong, I tend to have trouble getting it far enough out in front of me. Possible connection.

At this point, though, I don't think I can change. Not putting those fingers on the racquet makes it seem like its dragging on my serving arm. It just feels wrong. Interesting thing- I'll sometimes abbreviate my service motion, go for the Roddick-like takeback. I do this once in a while when I'm feeling leg weary, or when my opponent seems to be reading my normal motion. When I use that motion, I don't hold the racquet with the off hand. I do sort of rest the strings on the ball, but not on my fingers.

[SystemicAnomaly]

After years of playing, I just realized that I'm resting the racquet on the last 3 fingers of my off hand while going into my service motion...

I hold the ball between my index finger and thumb, near the top of the throat, and use the the other three fingers to hold the racquet up. As I go into the service motion, I pretty much drop the racquet from that slot, and bring all the off hand fingers into contact with the ball for the toss.

Anyone else do this? Any coaches on here feel one way or the other about it? I really can't say if it effects my toss-

I do pretty much the same thing & actually recommend it to students. I rest the racket (near the throat) on 3 (or 4) fingertips of the tossing hand. I don't believe that it really affects the ball toss. On the other hand, it takes the weight of the racket off your dominant arm & helps you to relax most of the muscles in that arms prior to intiating the service motion. Another way to do this is to rest (the throat of) the racket across the wrist of your tossing arm... this might be better if you really think that resting the racket on the fingertips is somehow interferring with your toss.

Many ppl grip the racket too tightly early in the service motion which may tense up too many muscles in your serving arm. If you try to keep the grip fairly loose (and also keep most of the muscles in the arm from tightening up) for most/much of your service motion, then, hopefully, your body will just naturally tighten the muscles that need to tightened at the appropriate time.

A lot of tournament players also make a practice of switching the racket to their non-dom arm in between points in order to give their dominant arm a bit of a rest.

[mj01]

That makes perfect sense. I have a very relaxed grip/arm on my serve, and I don't really start to flex the arm until the racquet hits the trophy position. When I take those fingers off the racquet, I lose that relaxed arm feel on the takeback.

So I guess I stumbled into a decent technique without even realizing I was doing it. Wish that held true for my backhand, but I know it doesn't.