Aiming a serve?

[Doanasaur]

Hi friends so recently i've been practicing my serve and it's going very well! But i have a question on aiming the serve. Is aiming the serve about:
1.positioning your body towards the target
2.where you strike the ball on the serve
3.or something else
Can you guys tell me how you aim your serve and what to do to better improve the aim? I've recently lost a lot of important points due to my horrendous aim lol and decided i need help. Thanks!

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

You don't want to change your position for different placements of your serve. That would be a dead giveaway to your intended target area. Instead, assume a position that will make it easy to serve to any target location.

Serving to different target locations is more about minor/slight changes is swingpath or racket face angles. The best way to learn to find or determine these slight adjustments is to develop a fairly consistent toss and watch that toss as closely as possibly.

Make certain that your tossing arm fully extends upward after releasing the ball as stays up there for the trophy phase of your serve. Do not pull that arm down until the ball is nearly at the intended contact point. The tossing hand should not start to come down until the racket head starts to drop (after the trophy phase). Fully extending the arm (and keeping it up) should help you to better determine the precise location of the ball and the exact timing of your drop and upward swing.

In addition to closely watching the ball, try to visualize your intended target area. After a while your brain (and muscle memory) will subconsciously determine the slight adjustments needed to hit your serve to different spots. This will come, in time, with a stored database of visual information (from closely watching the ball location) and from learning to visualize your target areas.

 

[PhrygianDominant]

I, for one, have a few stock serves that I hit in matches. For the most part, they are:
1st serve variety
Flat serve (ad-wide corner, deuce-up the T)
Slice (ad-T, deuce-wide corner)

2nd serve variety
Top/Kick (ad-wide sideline, deuce-T)
Slice/Kick (ad-T, deuce-wide sideline)

To hit these change-ups, the toss is slightly varied, and the angle of the racquet face is slightly varied. When it comes to aiming, I am relying on the practice I have done beforehand to activate the muscle memory, which allows me to hit a serve I have hit many times before. I am not consciously aiming the ball at a point. I visualize the toss I want, and I hit the serve I know, and then it produces the effect I want.

When I am practicing my serve I try things I wouldn't do in a match. This is mostly to avoid getting stale and becoming frustrated.

When in a match I try very hard to do things exactly the same when I serve, because the serve is very complicated and difficult. If there are small unnoticed changes because you lack a routine, they can change the motion fairly drastically, which will hurt consistency and make things frustrating.

Another technique, which I use more for ground strokes but could apply to the serve as well, is to see the flight path in your mind's eye while you are focusing on the ball with your physical eye. Notice I didn't say target. I try to visualize the entire flight path of the ball, bounce included, just like the graphics on TV.

 

[gull_man]

good question ! I'm learning it too. study stuff on www.feeltennis.com (something like that). the slovakian instructor knows it well enough. it's not naturally at all you know! use the same toss (for first serve) and accelerate racket on edge - follow ball with edge- and then AT THE LAST INSTANT turn the face at the right angle. AVOID bring the racket face flat and moving it in the direction you want the ball to go. it may look like this? on wide serve on ad side, however don't aim for that. follow the ball with edge and then last minute manipulate the racket face angle.

as you can see, it goes against what we learn naturally - to move the racket face in the direction we want to go. or to use your body to control the direction


also, and this will help you aim even if the technique is the wrong and common way, watch the ball long enough while you make contact.

 

[Doanasaur]

Wow this is great! Definitely will try all these tips in my next hitting session. I think the hardest part for me is gonna be developing the muscle memory and visualizing that target area, but it'll come to me sooner or later. Thanks guys!

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

Muscle memory shouldn't be all that hard to develop. Repetition is the key -- that, and attention to detail -- watch the ball closely and pay attention to the result.

If target visualization (imagery) is difficult, then try serving with actual targets. But don't put traffic cone targets right on top of the lines and corners as some players do. Those targets are not realistic. In fact, you can sometimes knock over those targets by hitting it near the top. Those serves would actually be out. Move your targets in a few feet from the lines -- you are serving to a target area, not to a line or a single point on the court. Even a large hula hoop could be used to designate a suitable target area.

Pick a target and then create/maintain a mental image of that target as you toss the ball and swing at it. After a while this should get relatively easy to do -- even w/o an physical target. Try the following for another visualization exercise. Start at the center harsh mark on the baseline. Picture the back service line or one of the side lines. Close your eyes, visualize the line, walk to it and stop when you think that you have one of both of your feet on the line. Try this with a different line. Now try this with running (or side-stepping) instead of walking. Here are some other types of visualization details and techniques:

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/sport_psych/a/aa091700a.htm

 

[Attila_the_gorilla]

With one of my friends we have tried a fun drill. We're serving to each other. Just after I toss the ball, he calls out: Wide, T, or Body. And I try to serve to that location, somewhere between first and second serve speed usually. We're finding it fairly easy, though some serves are more difficult than others with my stock standard toss.

We do it both to the Ad side and the Deuce side. Really good fun.

 

[Chas Tennis]

Hi friends so recently i've been practicing my serve and it's going very well! But i have a question on aiming the serve. Is aiming the serve about:
1.positioning your body towards the target
2.where you strike the ball on the serve
3.or something else
Can you guys tell me how you aim your serve and what to do to better improve the aim? I've recently lost a lot of important points due to my horrendous aim lol and decided i need help. Thanks!

The high level servers all utilize internal shoulder rotation (ISR). [This is a specific, defined, joint motion and not the visible rotation of the bulk of the shoulders.] The basic motion is shown in this composite picture but the picture is NOT accurate as it is processed to not show hand motion.

1) & 2) The first two points that you mention are factors.
3) something else - the ISR changes the direction of the racket face as the entire straight arm rotates. Timing.
4) Others - grip, timing of all factors, toss, etc...

If you have an ISR serve, as verified by high speed video, and understand some other features, such as grips, you can practice and train your serve.

If your serve applies another technique - other than the high level serves that high speed videos show the pros to be doing - you would have to determine on your own what your approach should be.

This composite picture by Toly has been specially processed to isolate the hand-racket rotation. In the high speed video the hand is moving mostly away from the camera. For this composite picture the hand in a frame was always overlaid on the hand in the previous frame in order to isolate the arm's rotation and minimize the hand's translation. The axis of rotation runs through the arm. Mostly ISR.

https://vimeo.com/91748883

Since the angle between the racket and forearm rapidly increases from about 90° to maybe 160° at impact and the arm is rotating the motion of the racket head is roughly an upward spiral. See if you can see an upward spiral leading to impact. The frames in this picture only take about 30? milliseconds. Therefore, it is not possible to see this rapid motion by eye, only with high speed video.

Impact frame.

 

[PhrygianDominant]

If target visualization (imagery) is difficult, then try serving with actual targets. But don't put traffic cone targets right on top of the lines and corners as some players do. Those targets are not realistic. In fact, you can sometimes knock over those targets by hitting it near the top. Those serves would actually be out. Move your targets in a few feet from the lines -- you are serving to a target area, not to a line or a single point on the court. Even a large hula hoop could be used to designate a suitable target area.

On a clay court (or a dirty hard court) you can just draw targets.

 

[GoudX]

You don't want to change your position for different placements of your serve. That would be a dead giveaway to your intended target area. Instead, assume a position that will make it easy to serve to any target location.

Serving to different target locations is more about minor/slight changes is swingpath or racket face angles. The best way to learn to find or determine these slight adjustments is to develop a fairly consistent toss and watch that toss as closely as possibly.

Make certain that your tossing arm fully extends upward after releasing the ball as stays up there for the trophy phase of your serve. Do not pull that arm down until the ball is nearly at the intended contact point. The tossing hand should not start to come down until the racket head starts to drop (after the trophy phase). Fully extending the arm (and keeping it up) should help you to better determine the precise location of the ball and the exact timing of your drop and upward swing.

In addition to closely watching the ball, try to visualize your intended target area. After a while your brain (and muscle memory) will subconsciously determine the slight adjustments needed to hit your serve to different spots. This will come, in time, with a stored database of visual information (from closely watching the ball location) and from learning to visualize your target areas.

No-one seems to notice that I open up the angle that I am standing at when aiming for a wide serve to the right, as long as it only changes about 5 degrees or so, but that is more than enough to help get an ace out wide on the ad side. And even if they do notice and start cheating over, a powerful slice serve skidding back across the T is possible from that position...

Likewise a half step to the left or right (no more than a foot) is usually not noticed as long as you are casual about it and walk straight to the new position. Keeping the toss fairly similar, while varying pace and spin is much more important than maintaining hip angle IMO.

90% of players are paying more attention to their return than how you are serving, so just don't do anything obviously different. And if they are obsessing over your game then it is often easier to throw their game by hitting simple heavy serves to their weakness.

 

[LeeD]

You can fine tune the aim of your serves with followthru direction on your swingpath, with a SLIGHT adjustment of grip, with slight differences in toss location, and with slight differences of your body movement towards the court.

 

[sientelo]

You don't want to change your position for different placements of your serve. That would be a dead giveaway to your intended target area. Instead, assume a position that will make it easy to serve to any target location.

Serving to different target locations is more about minor/slight changes is swingpath or racket face angles. The best way to learn to find or determine these slight adjustments is to develop a fairly consistent toss and watch that toss as closely as possibly.

Make certain that your tossing arm fully extends upward after releasing the ball as stays up there for the trophy phase of your serve. Do not pull that arm down until the ball is nearly at the intended contact point. The tossing hand should not start to come down until the racket head starts to drop (after the trophy phase). Fully extending the arm (and keeping it up) should help you to better determine the precise location of the ball and the exact timing of your drop and upward swing.

In addition to closely watching the ball, try to visualize your intended target area. After a while your brain (and muscle memory) will subconsciously determine the slight adjustments needed to hit your serve to different spots. This will come, in time, with a stored database of visual information (from closely watching the ball location) and from learning to visualize your target areas.

Awesome advice. I'm going to add this to my weekly serve reminders