Can you hit both flat and slice first serve?

[J011yroger]

After a lot of experiment i think there are more diferenz in the flat and slice serves.
For example where to hit the ball and swing path both for sure.
For me the diferenz is even bigger, my flat serve toss and swing are both decent but slice serve toss is already a problem. ( if my toss succeed decent, the swing seems to be a lesser problem...)
/ i have no decent coach and i would not like to share a video/

It's the same serve, turn your hand more for flat, less for slice. Let's not pretend this is rocket science.

J

 

[nyta2]

It's the same serve, turn your hand more for flat, less for slice. Let's not pretend this is rocket science.

J

it was for me, until you showed me the way....
that said, the most important thing you showed me IMO was not necessarily the hand movement, but that my toss was in the wrong location...

 

[mental midget]

As a teenager my first serve was exclusively flat bombs...i was obsessed with hitting it as fast as a possibly can. was a very...low percentage approach.

as i got older i started to cut the ball more, and now i don't hit flat bombs very often...down the tee from the deuce side sometime, or out wide on the ad. spin just gives you more options...hard slice out wide on the deuce court is by far my biggest ace generator.

took a lesson years ago in south africa from a pro who had been good friends with goran. he mentioned that goran said he always cut the ball to some degree, and that his 'flat' serve was just the minimal amount there...he never had a completely vertical swing path. i adopted that swing thought and use it to this day.

 

[Dragy]

As a teenager my first serve was exclusively flat bombs...i was obsessed with hitting it as fast as a possibly can. was a very...low percentage approach.

as i got older i started to cut the ball more, and now i don't hit flat bombs very often...down the tee from the deuce side sometime, or out wide on the ad. spin just gives you more options...hard slice out wide on the deuce court is by far my biggest ace generator.

took a lesson years ago in south africa from a pro who had been good friends with goran. he mentioned that goran said he always cut the ball to some degree, and that his 'flat' serve was just the minimal amount there...he never had a completely vertical swing path. i adopted that swing thought and use it to this day.

That’s good advice, particularly with modern open-pattern racquets

 

[mental midget]

That’s good advice, particularly with modern open-pattern racquets

yeah i thought so. cutting the ball, even if only to the smallest degree, over time really helps you develop better directional control. and for a righty on the ad side, that hard slice down the tee curls away and is harder to track than a really flat delivery.

i mean, if you've got a truly big flat serve and can hit it with reasonable consistency, it's not a bad shot of course. but in general, consistently incorporating spin will, in my experience at least, make you a better server with way more options. hard slice into the body as well, for both righties and lefties is a real pain to deal with as well...when i'm facing a particularly good returner i find that stroke makes it much harder for a player like that to generate an offensive return, whereas there are guys who can be quite good at slapping back a flat ball in their strike zone.