How long was it before you were 'comfortable' with your serve?

[yescomeon]

My definition of 'comfortable is:

Being able to almost guarantee you can put the ball in the box, at whichever pace is easiest to you, whilst doing the full service motion (or most of it). This can be a flat serve or a topspin serve.

For me, I've been playing for a year and a half, I've hit literally thousands of serves, it must be around the 3500 mark now. And still, I only have a success rate of the ball going into the box of around 60%. I'm not even attempting to serve fast, I just go through the service motion and hit the ball at a 'default minimum' speed for me which I find comfortable. For flat serves, its 55%, topspin serve its slightly higher perhaps at 65%. Its frustrating as hell. I can get a much higher percentage by short-cutting my service motion, for example, just tossing the ball up and hit the ball, or even doing an under-arm serve (cringe), but thats nowhere near as effective as even my slowest flat serve with a full service motion (if it goes in).

A lot of this is down to not having a coach, but I'd like to know how other people have got on with their serve and how long it took for them to get comfortable with it.

 

[rainingaces]

Been playing a while and I have good days and bad days it's mostly mental, like everything else, how I approach the routine. Everything should be done with purpose even the ball bounce before the serve. Ball toss is big for intermediates, so maybe you need to mess around with ball toss placement or height.

Another common fault is that your grip on the racquet is too tight.

 

[shindemac]

My definition of 'comfortable is:

Being able to almost guarantee you can put the ball in the box, at whichever pace is easiest to you, whilst doing the full service motion (or most of it). This can be a flat serve or a topspin serve.

For me, I've been playing for a year and a half, I've hit literally thousands of serves, it must be around the 3500 mark now. And still, I only have a success rate of the ball going into the box of around 60%. I'm not even attempting to serve fast, I just go through the service motion and hit the ball at a 'default minimum' speed for me which I find comfortable. For flat serves, its 55%, topspin serve its slightly higher perhaps at 65%. Its frustrating as hell. I can get a much higher percentage by short-cutting my service motion, for example, just tossing the ball up and hit the ball, or even doing an under-arm serve (cringe), but thats nowhere near as effective as even my slowest flat serve with a full service motion (if it goes in).

A lot of this is down to not having a coach, but I'd like to know how other people have got on with their serve and how long it took for them to get comfortable with it.

3500? That's nothing! Do you practice your serve?

Piano players practice for hours every single day. Same thing for tennis serve. No different. You can't learn it by not practicing. Only difference is, your liable to get injured if you practice for more than an hour. I recommend even less like 15 to 30 minutes the most since beginners will have bad technique and will hurt themselves easily. If your gonna spend hundreds of hours practicing, might as well get a coach too. Don't want to waste time ingraining bad technique. Why would you want to waste time unless you like wasting time.

 

[Rubens]

If we go by your definition, it took me a year. Flat, top, slice, you name it. Full motion. The "only" problem is a severe lack of pace, mostly due to being tense (working on it with my coach). Really, the slowness of my serve is so laughable that I've considered wearing a paper bag over my head when practicing my serves. But at least it's consistent...

 

[yescomeon]

Been playing a while and I have good days and bad days it's mostly mental, like everything else, how I approach the routine. Everything should be done with purpose even the ball bounce before the serve. Ball toss is big for intermediates, so maybe you need to mess around with ball toss placement or height.

Another common fault is that your grip on the racquet is too tight.

Ah yes, the ball toss.

The annoying thing is that by itself, I can actually toss it pretty consistently. But when I'm holding the racquet on my other hand and I have to synchronize all of the motions in my serve - the feets, my racquet arm, the ball toss suffers quite a bit.

 

[yescomeon]

3500? That's nothing! Do you practice your serve?

Piano players practice for hours every single day. Same thing for tennis serve. No different. You can't learn it by not practicing. Only difference is, your liable to get injured if you practice for more than an hour. I recommend even less like 15 to 30 minutes the most since beginners will have bad technique and will hurt themselves easily. If your gonna spend hundreds of hours practicing, might as well get a coach too. Don't want to waste time ingraining bad technique. Why would you want to waste time unless you like wasting time.

Yeah some times I go out onto the courts and just hit serves for about an hour or two.

 

[yescomeon]

If we go by your definition, it took me a year. Flat, top, slice, you name it. Full motion. The "only" problem is a severe lack of pace, mostly due to being tense (working on it with my coach). Really, the slowness of my serve is so laughable that I've considered wearing a paper bag over my head when practicing my serves. But at least it's consistent...

Wow thats brilliant, I still have trouble switching between different types of serves. Like say I hit a flat serve first, if I try and hit a topspin on the next serve I can mess it up badly because my muscles (and mind as well?) seems to have temporary forgotten the motion for a topspin serve. I need to be hitting the same types of serve for a least a few times to get used to it.

 

[Rubens]

Wow thats brilliant

Thanks for the kind words. I guess I progressed relatively fast because I'm literally obsessed with the serve. I would go to the courts/backboards and do hundreds of serves every other day. And yet it's only beginning to be decent now.

Edit: make sure you have proper coaching too.

 

[Silent]

OP, you'll be the first to know once it happens.

 

[Attila_the_gorilla]

I first played tennis about 2 and a half years ago. Have been playing and practicing regularly for about a year and a half.
Currently I serve with a full, relaxed and fast service motion, the only variable is the different spins. I have great confidence in my second serve, which is also a full, fast swing.

I'd say it took me about 2 years to become comfortable with swinging fast on my second serve without breaking my back. Previously I used to arch my back very deep to create the topspin, and it was hurting my lower back. So I changed my technique to make it comfortable on my body.

 

[Power Player]

It takes a long time. A real long time. And the best thing you can do is slow everything down, even in match play. Whenever I find myself in a rut, I slow everything down and it comes back.

 

[Fintft]

It takes a long time. A real long time. And the best thing you can do is slow everything down, even in match play. Whenever I find myself in a rut, I slow everything down and it comes back.

Agreed: It took me at least 5 years and only recently I have confidence, starting from these:

No tension at contact and letting the racket go, as opposed to trying to control it.
"Allow the racket to drop and throw it through the ball and you might be surprised how many good serves go in" and "the serve works in a more circular motion".

I've noticed that after I've started practicing the new drills from Thomas about racket head drop and effortless serve (see
http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showpost.php?p=8629056&postcount=493), I've hit one ball into the net and most of the rest of 40 into the service box(very few long).

 

[LeeD]

For me, it took 4 years of playing 5 days a week, 3-5 hours a day, to find a flat first serve that goes in maybe 40%, and a top/slice second serve that goes in 98% of the time.
It's great against lower level players, but against peers, or Open level players, it's not nearly good enough to get the job done.

 

[PhrygianDominant]

This is a hard question. When I practice my "stock" serves, I don't miss that often, and when I do it's almost always long, not in the net. The serve is just not that fast. About half of my serves hit the back fence before bouncing, and they really aren't that fast. In match play, it is worse, I miss more and they tend to just get slower. As I get tired, I start to make more errors due to losing my legs and the timing. When practicing more adventurous serves, like the extreme ad kicker from near the doubles alley, I miss a bit more. This takes a long time to get the muscle memory and timing down.

To give you an idea, I think I play at about 3.5 level. I may be improving, but my matchplay this year was horrible. In practice I look better, but I lose points due to inconsistency on my groundstrokes and my net misadventures. I am working on these things. Compared to my opponents I have a good serve.

To answer your question as to how long; I have been playing tennis for a few years, but I only last year started going to the courts alone regularly to work on my serve.

The toss, the contact point, and the follow through must be right. The swing path (racquet drop, contact point/pronation, and follow through) must be right. If these things are right, you can have a reliable repeatable service. It just takes a long time and a lot of trial and error to put it all together. Keep trying and keep learning. Keep listening to coaches' advice and being critical of yourself. Put the time in.

That's all I got.