How fast is the serve if the ball...

hits the hardcourt ground within a foot of the fence after bouncing from just inside the service line? I guess it makes a difference between a flat and kick serve? Every court I've been seems to have the same distance between the baseline and the fence so I assume this is the same everywhere in the US.
 
Probably not very fast, you need to be able to hit the fence on one bounce for it to be considered a fast serve. You will never get a kick serve to hit the fence unless its the side fence. Unless you just got a totally wicked kick serve.
 

ubel

Professional
On a similar note, is there a point where the kickserve kicks so high that it forces the returner to slice it back, and is this too high even if it's travelling with pretty high speed?
 
Down the T? With new balls? Probably no more than 75 mph.

Out wide, with old balls? At least 95-100 mph. Huge difference.
 

La Bomba

Professional
My flat serve is now getting stuck in the fence about 5 foot up the fence, how fast do u think that would be?
 

Andres

G.O.A.T.
superbooga said:
Down the T? With new balls? Probably no more than 75 mph.

Out wide, with old balls? At least 95-100 mph. Huge difference.

It depends. At same speed, a slice serve flies longer than a flat or a topspin serve.

My choice: We can't tell.
 

shindemac

Hall of Fame
For a standard court, the fence is 21' from the baseline. I would say you're serving somewhere in the 80s.
 

TennisAsAlways

Professional
La Bomba said:
My flat serve is now getting stuck in the fence about 5 foot up the fence, how fast do u think that would be?
lucky leprechaun said:
Oh yeah, well my serve is hitting the fence and getting stuck in it.
Oh yeah, well my flat serves and power topspin serves go through the fence. :p And my kickers hop over the fence after the second bounce. :p
 

rounick

Semi-Pro
How about using time as a refference?For example I think I have managed to hear the sound of the serve,the groundstroke and the hit on the fence on the same second,perhaps even less(when I get it right),how fast would that be roughly you think?Maybe we should bring stopwatches on court!!

P.S. With new strings and new balls I don't think it's that hard to hit the fence on a kick serve..
 

FuZz_Da_AcE

Rookie
TennisAsAlways said:
Oh yeah, well my flat serves and power topspin serves go through the fence. :p And my kickers hop over the fence after the second bounce. :p

My slice serve finds itself in the corner...of the court next to me! :cool:
 

Rickson

G.O.A.T.
lucky leprechaun said:
Probably not very fast, you need to be able to hit the fence on one bounce for it to be considered a fast serve. You will never get a kick serve to hit the fence unless its the side fence. Unless you just got a totally wicked kick serve.
I've had loopy kick serves that hit the fence so that's not necessarily true about kick serves not reaching the fence. If the kick serve lands a bit short however, it will probably not reach the fence because the bounce is more vertical than horizontal so I'd suggest practicing the kick serve to reach close to the service line.
 

papa

Hall of Fame
I think I'd be more impressed with the percentage of first serves "in" than I'd be with the speed. Having said that, I must admit that not many of my serves would hit the back fence.

Incidently, although there are suggested overall lengths and widths for courts, they do range quite a bit depending on many factors. As a general rule, indoor courts have smaller areas in back of the baseline than outdoor courts and many municipal courts have smaller backcourts. The width of courts will vary all over the place.
 

kevhen

Hall of Fame
80-85 mph would be my estimate, normal balls, normal surface. It takes about 90-95mph to reach the fence on one bounce. I hit the fence about 3-4 feet up when ripping around 110. If I am hitting about 100mph I hit about a foot or 2 up the fence. If I hit with topspin and pace I can hit a little higher but I talking a very flat serve.

My 90mph slice doesn't quite make the fence since it bites too much into the surface losing pace.
 

shindemac

Hall of Fame
I probably hit 85-90 then. I hit 3 feet up the fence once and I was like *#$! how did I do that!!! That sucker moved so fast, and was still moving up by the time it hit the fence. If I use good should/torso rotation, I get a bit more power and can hit the bottom of the fence. If I can get rid of the hitch in my serve, I can hit 1 foot up the fence. If I time everything right, well, then I can do 2+ feet. But my flat serve gets screwed up if I practice other serves.

None of my other spin serves can hit the fence.
 

shindemac

Hall of Fame
Right now, there's a lot of problems with my serve, so I don't know if I want to fix my flat, or improve my spin serves. So for my flat that currently tops out at 90, I would say 33%. For my topspin, it's about 75%. For my flat, I have much slower versions that trade pace for placement. I can also do pace and placement, but that's really hard cause of all the things going on in my head: bend knees, don't open up shoulder too early, turn shoulder, keep arm and wrist loose, and o yea, don't forget to aim, etc. As you can tell, I work on my serves a lot. I want to unify my serves and not have so many different variations.
 

Galactus

Banned
My flat serves down the 'T' hit the back-fence about 3-4 ft high...and the fence is about 15-20ft from the baseline...
80mph or so?
 

shindemac

Hall of Fame
It was just warm enough to go out and hit some serves today! My flat sucks. My topspin was decent. My ball toss is pretty bad. Usually after practicing an hour or so, my serve starts to settle down. Things become more consistent and my speed and power go up. My body is pretty sore right now.
 

kevhen

Hall of Fame
You know you have a powerful serve when it's still climbing when it hits the fence. A topspin serve will be running out of steam and falling back down when it hits the fence but a hard flat one will still be rising when it makes contact with the fence.
 

junnie

New User
wish i had a speed gun or something =D any of u guys actually used one b4 to check your serving speed?
 

TennisAsAlways

Professional
kevhen said:
You know you have a powerful serve when it's still climbing when it hits the fence. A topspin serve will be running out of steam and falling back down when it hits the fence but a hard flat one will still be rising when it makes contact with the fence.
What you have described is precisely what happens to a lot of my serves. In a previous post, I said that my serves hop over the fence on/after the second bounce; what you described is exactly what happens. It climbs up and over the fence, shotting straight up! I kid you not. :D

Things like that just makes my affinity to this game grow every single time. Fun stuff I tell you!
 

kevhen

Hall of Fame
Yeah when I serve on this fast indoor surface the ball is hitting the net about 5 feet up and still climbing. It's pretty cool to see. But outdoors the surface takes some pace out of the ball and it only hits about 3 feet high on the fence and might be still climbing but is hard to tell. I also try to get my slice serve on the duece court to second bounce in the doubles alley on the next court over. I try to see how sharp and short I can hit my topspin serve to go out wide on the ad court.

The serving games people will play!
 

shindemac

Hall of Fame
That's a neat trick for the slice serve. For me, I serve on the ad court near the center mark. I serve down the T and see how much it curves by the time it hits the fence. I put my racket cover on the fence where the center mark would extend to.

For the deuce side, I don't have any such tricks yet. But my serve looks like it's going to land out, but suddenly swerves in during the last moment. Then I just look at the angle after the bounce.
 
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