Any 4.5+ players not using flat hard 1st serve?

[Japanese Maple]

Just recently I have been working on tossing the ball off my left
shoulder and hitting all the serves from this one toss with only slight variations. As the toss goes up, I am rotating my shoulders
and leaning my upper body backwards like you would for a topspin/
american twist serve, but I can also hit a slice,hard slice, and flat
off of the same toss and body mechanics-great disguise! Because of my disguise and placement I am getting a fair amount of aces,
but the real value of hitting all serves off the left shoulder out front
with different spins,speeds, and placements is your opponent never gets comfortable and the returns are usually hit back with less pace because they don't get the same type of ball in their strike zone and they are constantly having to adjust to your disguise and variety. Stephan Edberg and Patrick Rafter did this
to perfection, along with Pete Sampras-great for serve and volley.
Instead of hitting a flat serve try hitting what is called a hard slice.
Toss the ball out front and instead of pronating and hitting the ball square on, hit the ball towards 2:00 with a glancing blow with
the forearm pronation after contact being the same as a flat serve.
Your percentage will go up, without losing much speed at all.
Slice serves are very effective against opponents with big western
grips-the ball stays low and slides away form them. Going for too
much flat serves will hurt your first serve percentage and disrupt
your rhythum. Remember, to have a quality serve you must be
adept at placement,variety(spin and speed),disguise,power, and
most importantly consistency of doing all of the above and getting
a high percentage of 1st serves in. Heavy spins allow you to do this and can be more difficult to return than flats because of the movement and bounce the spin provides. Just yesterday, I hit aces
to both sides of each service box, and often my opponent didn't
even move or quessed wrong because of my disguise through keeping my toss and body mechanics the same. I realize this is a
very advance way to serve, but why not try it out and see if you
can make it work. Also, I use a very strong eastern bh grip to hit all the serves-best for tight spin production and glancing blows with pronation. Next time I practice with my partner I am actually
going to try the Pete Sampras drill where Pete Fisher use to tell Pete what serve to hit(flat,slice,kick) when his toss was released and at its peak. I thought I could never do this but I think I can now-can't wait to try it out.

[kevhen]

I was varying my first serve hitting maybe 75% hard spinners and 25% flat serves, but then my opponent got used to my hard spin serves so they weren't as effective and the hard spinners seem to take more effort than hitting flat. So that is why I am switching to hitting almost all first serves hard and flat so that my second serve is more difficult for them to handle having not seen as many hard spin serves and being so much different than the flat one in how it comes off their racquet tending to sail long. Some guys are just good at blocking and getting serves back, so against those guys I may either go for the lines and more aces or back off on hitting everything so hard and just get more in. But hitting hard and flat is great when you are 6'4! I do have a 4.5 level serve and if I could place them better it would be 5.0. But the rest of my game is 4.0 at this point.

[Robert Jones]

Thanks guys some really good information.

I don't think I warm up enough. I feel so confident about my slices/spins that I only take like 2-4 practice shots then play. I had not tried flat in a long time so for the heck of it I warmed up hitting flat only. And played 2 sets doing flat/twist. I only went wide or middle with flat. I tried to use more finess rather than pound it.

I think I found a flat serve that does not kill my shoulder and almost gives me full pace. At about the 4th game serving my flat was pretty grooved. Had a two games that I served 3 aces in a row then a jamming shot for a love service game. Had not done that in a long time. I'm thinking if I warm up with like 10-20 easy flat serves I can start to use it again. Played 4 sets last night and the arm is still decent w/o pain killers.

I think I could give the 4.5s -5.0s a game if I could keep it up. LOL if I played 5.0 my first serve would no doubt drop to 30%.

Speedwise hmm 110-115mph I would guess. Seems plenty if I hit near the lines.

[kevhen]

Yes, I start my warm up hitting flat at about 50mph and probably add about 5 mph each warmup until approaching 100mph. Otherwise you tear muscles in your shoulder if you try to hit too hard right away. Then I will hit soft kick serves once my arm is more warmed up since more muscles are involved in the kick and then start hitting that harder and harder until full warmed.

I try to vary my flat serve placement like 40% up middle, 40% into the body, and 20% outwide. If my placement were better I would hit less into the body and more outwide. I do go outwide more on the ad side when I turn my wrist outward and go for deceptive aces as I still swing like I am going up the T. It would be nice if I could get up to 110-115. I was clocked at 104 last summer and probably max out at 110 on a good serve but usually hit around 100 I think.

[Tomek]

When my first flat serve is not coming in, I like to change my grip to what I use in the second serve, but I don't change the rest. I use the same toss, swing etc. with different grip. Now the ball goes in much more often, is pretty fast and has some nice spin...

[kevhen]

Yeah, I have been experimenting a little with using a semi-continental grip to add just a little bit of spin instead of hitting so flat all the time, just to mix it up a little, but still hitting hard and coming mostly over the top with my arm extended but helping to improve that first serve percentage just a tad. I think that is more of what a Sampras serve was all about. I am still not sure how he got so much spin on his with the pace he put behind it.