First ever serve to hit back fence without bouncing

optic yellow said:
I finally unlocked this achievement a couple days ago. Standard fence distance of ~20' from baseline and made contact maybe 2-3' feet up. Could not repeat it at all on subsequent attempts but still felt like huge validation of progress being made.
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2-3' up... that's pretty good. both my flat & kicker usually don't get more than 1' up... and not always, and must be with newish balls :P
 
Congrats, good milestone! In my experience it still takes a long time to truly develop a reliable deep serve from that point. Your match serve will not be as good due to nerves. Be careful that your current successful serves are not too flat, because they will not be repeatable enough in matches. If you can hit ten in a row that hit the back fence (it’s ok if a few are a few inches out) which have decent spin and are not max effort, then we’re talking. Took me around 20,000 - 30,000 reps from my first few to hit a back fence to get to that point (although with old balls) and along the way I made a lot of technical changes including my grip to get more spin. But I’m not tall nor do I have serve talent so probably many others can improve faster…I am just extremely persistent.
 
nyta2 said:
2-3' up... that's pretty good. both my flat & kicker usually don't get more than 1' up... and not always, and must be with newish balls :P
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Probably closer to 2 than 3 but yeah I could not believe my eyes. Even if it was a bit of a one-off hit it did not feel like luck because I know I thought through the body movements correctly. I guess probably the luck aspect was toss placement because I'm still thinking in terms of "sync toss correctly with loading action" rather than "put toss where I want it" but that is a) hard and b) not something I think invalidates the conscious control over other elements of the process.

coolvinny said:
Congrats, good milestone! In my experience it still takes a long time to truly develop a reliable deep serve from that point. Your match serve will not be as good due to nerves. Be careful that your current successful serves are not too flat, because they will not be repeatable enough in matches. If you can hit ten in a row that hit the back fence (it’s ok if a few are a few inches out) which have decent spin and are not max effort, then we’re talking. Took me around 20,000 - 30,000 reps from my first few to hit a back fence to get to that point (although with old balls) and along the way I made a lot of technical changes including my grip to get more spin. But I’m not tall nor do I have serve talent so probably many others can improve faster…I am just extremely persistent.
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Yeah I am not expecting it to be match ready yet but for someone who even a year ago could only dink serve that I was even able to do it is incredibly exciting.

Questions:

How can I tell if they are too flat or not?
What changes did you make to your grip?

AnyPUG said:
Unless the competition is only about serve speed, it might be a huge backward step to win more matches. With rec level technique, it's a lot easier to return faster serves than very slow serves that keep low.
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Oh yeah for sure. I'm not going to discard my well developed repertoire of junk serves just because I hit a real fast flat serve. But being able to threaten this makes the junk serving more effective I think.
 
travlerajm said:
Did you have something special for breakfast that day?
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Don't sell the impactfulness of your instruction to me short. I get enough of that from my dad already.

Digital Atheist said:
I'm disappointed, since after reading the thread title I was anticipating video!
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Filming in anticipation of that is of course a guarantee it will not happen. :notworthy:

I probably should get around to taping some of my hitting for self-evaluation purposes but after seeing how I looked hitting golf balls I'm kinda waiting until the weight loss regimen kicks in a bit.
 
If you want a high bounce against back wall 21 feet from baseline, wait for a HOT day, look for a new, abrasive court, use Wilson tennis balls, high altitude helps lots.
If you want to hit low balls against the backwall 21 feet from the baseline, wait for a freezing day, look for worn down slick courts use Tretorn hi altitude balls at sea level.
 
LeeD said:
If you want a high bounce against back wall 21 feet from baseline, wait for a HOT day, look for a new, abrasive court, use Wilson tennis balls, high altitude helps lots.
If you want to hit low balls against the backwall 21 feet from the baseline, wait for a freezing day, look for worn down slick courts use Tretorn hi altitude balls at sea level.
Click to expand...
Also easier with syn gut than with poly.
 
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