I doubt you would love to see me serve, lol. I'm over 60 and have a host of injuries that go way back to my college football days and beyond. I did serve over 120 in my early 40s though. Maybe soon I'll have video of some of my better students serving and that would be far more indicative of the quality of my "Serve Code" instruction model. I just last week worked (for the 1st time with him on the serve) with a 5'8", 16 yr old who said he had a terrible serve before and didn't really have a serve. I really never saw it, but will take his word on it. I have a vid of him serving after about 20 mins using the Serve Code that maybe he will allow me to share. Even though we were just working on flow and timing with reduced power, he started making serves that were hitting the back fence with good force.
oh man, you didn't disappoint!
Actually, I would love to see your serve. Having injuries actually makes it even more interesting to me because for many people, as we get older, we get more injuries and decreased mobility, and having good serve technique probably becomes even more important for injury prevention.
For the high level serving technique:
The racket head must rise up while in contact with the ball for top spin and kick serves.
The racket also rises up for flat and slice serves, but not as much.
This can be directly observed in high speed videos. It appears to involve ulnar deviation, a wrist joint motion.
These composite gifs and pictures were created by Toly.
Slice serve gif. 3 frames shows racket positions before, during and after impact.
Slice serve. The 3 frames from above. Note rise of racket vs baseline.
Kick serve gif.
Kick serve. The 3 frames from above. Note racket rise vs baseline.
Flat serve. Use the period & comma keys to single frame. Time scale counts down to impact at "0" milliseconds.
Observe and compare all angles for the composite gifs, pictures and the video. All at impact - Arm angle tilt, forearm-to-racket-shaft angle, average direction of racket strings contacting ball vs vertical.
In order to record videos like these you need:
1) 240 fps
2) small motion blur (fast shutter)
3) bright sunny day
4) camera placement. (these were looking along the ball's trajectory)
Countdown time scale, processing & analysis was done on Kinovea. Kinovea is a free open source application that has many capabilities for video analysis and display.
The direction of the racket strings tend to be perpendicular to the spin axes shown in this ball diagram. The match would not be perfect because the racket head is on a curved path and the collision adds complications. Also, the ball spin diagram was made by studying elite players and the above images are from one pro player. But the racket string direction for the kick serve looks closer to the horizontal direction than the flat and slice serves. Print the ball diagram, draw perpendiculars to the 3 spin axes and see how close they might be. (I believe that the top spin serve has a different spin axis than the kick serve.)
If the OP does not have a high level serve technique, the OP is on his own.
That’s not a slice serve! It just lands wide in the box but does it move further to the left after the bounce? No.
the second serve in that 4 ball series is really hustling out wide... i find you can't hit the side net/fence/wall on one bounce without the ball curving/bouncing to the left with the added spin... impressive that he did that with a choked up grip without trying too hard. i can only do that say 1x in a bucket (i have to hit my spot close or on the sideline AND get enough sidespin to curve it out to the side fence.
No worries. Keep trying.
It’s even easier with a choked up grip.
That second serve landed almost outside the doubles line lol.
Agreed, the balls actually check back.
I think start to pronate early = flat serve, and start to pronate late = slice serve
If you pronate early (compared to the moment you hit the ball), you will hit the ball flat, there will be no brushing of the ball, all the speed gained through pronation is converted to forward momentum. Whereas if you pronate a little bit later you are still pronating as you hit the ball you will spin it and have a slice serve.
Is it possible to hit a reverse slice then if you pronate too early?Edit : you are correct, I said the opposite of what I meant
Actually it should be, but with conti grip it's kind of slow-down zone and possibly a close-down zone, so the swing itself might be weird, inefficient. Now with EFH grip...Is it possible to hit a reverse slice then if you pronate too early?
Is it possible to hit a reverse slice then if you pronate too early?
guessing you want to see it "slice" like freeman's vids?
Explain to me how Fed hits his slice and I will be more than happy
The angle of a slice serve is more annoying than its pace. Also I think you can easily adjust the degree of hitting through vs brushing the ball to increase/decrease pace.
I already linked Sergey Belov for anyone who bothered to watch it! He actually demonstrates the "pro" slice versus your average amateur/rec way where there is no pronation (and yes the ball does curve like crazy but as you said, against good players it goes too slow). Like Simon from TTT, I am confident his slice serve is, at the very least, adequate.
I want to get to the bottom of that question too!
Sometimes, when trying to hit a kick serve to the FH on the deuce side, I get an excellent curve of the ball, before and after the bounce, with good speed. I wish I could understand what exactly I am doing on those to make it repeatable.
I doubt I’ll get the right feeling before hitting a thousand slice serves in a few sessions. It seems like a fine balance of hitting through the ball with the right racket face angle and swing path.
I hear you, but I figured given I've personally found most of their instruction useful, and since he played to a very high level, his slice serve must be good.
It should depend on several factors, like whether the spin is clean sidespin (or even dose of underspin on some slowish ones, lol), or there's a fraction of topspin (@J011yroger choked up ones). The latter ones, if hit slow and spinny, get twist bounce on grippy courts. They are not far from similarly slowish spinny kick serves, just a bit different side/top ratio.
An observation from his demonstration:
Takes a lot of practice as you need to get all the angles right plus swing fast.
Well I agree with those saying it's an angle to cross sideline at which is determining. After-bounce action will anyway be weaker than pre-bounce. Now if you managed to pull him wide enough, who cares?
I’ll see tonight if there’s a big difference between RF97A and Pure Aero on slice serve.
Only if you use your left hand with PA.
