kick serve directional control

[johnmccabe]

I couldn't find any old threads or youtube video about how to control the direction of kick serve. The only video that sees to be useful basically says toss to 11 oclock and swing more left to right on ad court to kick it wide. Can anyone point me to a more comprehensive guide on this topic? Thank a bunch!!

 

[Shroud]

I couldn't find any old threads or youtube video about how to control the direction of kick serve. The only video that sees to be useful basically says toss to 11 oclock and swing more left to right on ad court to kick it wide. Can anyone point me to a more comprehensive guide on this topic? Thank a bunch!!

Respectfully, you would be better off with a bucket of balls practicing hitting targets.

 

[johnmccabe]

Respectfully, you would be better off with a bucket of balls practicing hitting targets.

I tried that already and didn't work very well for me... maybe others can figure it out by just hitting, not me

 

[SystemicAnomaly]

Visualization. Probably your best tool, along with a lot of practice, for developing directional control. Visualize your target area. Eventually your brain figures out how to make the minute adjustments to put the ball exactly where you imagine it going.

Finding an optimal toss should help as well. Perhaps a toss at 12 o'clock or 11 o'clock (or between) might be best. The toss should be slightly forward of the server / BL. But not as far forward as a flatter serve or a topspin-slice serve.

Other than visualization / imagery, the thing that should help you most is making sure that you're tossing arm continues to rise after the ball release -- to the point where it is vertical or nearly vertical for your trophy phase.

The extended hand for a vertical tossing arm should provide an excellent spatial reference to the location of the ball toss wrt your body position. Look for the proper spacing between your extended hand and the falling toss. If you pay close attention to that spacing, it can help immensely with swing timing, swing path and racket face orientation.

 

[Raul_SJ]

Visualization. Probably your best tool, along with a lot of practice, for developing directional control. Visualize your target area. Eventually your brain figures out how to make the minute adjustments to put the ball exactly where you imagine it going.

Yes, coach told me that the difference between a wide serve and T serve is just a couple of degrees of racquet face tilt. Very minute adjustment of racquet face that one cannot really directly consciously control ...Also find that I don't have consistent directional control until I serve at half speed or even one third speed. Quite pathetic but hopefully this approach is acceptable. Serve as slow as you need to to get directional control and then build up speed... Some coaches have you serve standing few feet away from the net. That might be okay for a few minutes but I prefer to get to the baseline and serve from there very very slowly.

Look for the proper spacing between your extended hand and the falling toss. If you pay close attention to that spacing, it can help immensely with swing timing, swing path and racket face orientation.

My first serve percentage is about 70% and most 3.5 players cannot attack it. But I have no idea if it is going wide, T, or body. About 80% end up going down the Deuce T and Ad wide. So it is good most are randomly going to the opponent's backhand but that is not my intent. It is all random... Opponent's think I am targeting their backhand.

 

[Morch Us]

Agree with @Shroud on this. It may actually be easier to just hit to a target in mind and tune/adjust based on error (trial and error) than looking at the theory/physics behind this.

But if you insist, direction of racket face on contact mainly determines which direction the balls goes.

how to control the direction of kick serve

Respectfully, you would be better off with a bucket of balls practicing hitting targets.

 

[johnmccabe]

Yes, coach told me that the difference between a wide serve and T serve is just a couple of degrees of racquet face tilt. Very minute adjustment of racquet face that one cannot really directly consciously control ...Also find that I don't have consistent directional control until I serve at half speed or even one third speed. Quite pathetic but hopefully this approach is acceptable. Serve as slow as you need to to get directional control and then build up speed... Some coaches have you serve standing few feet away from the net. That might be okay for a few minutes but I prefer to get to the baseline and serve from there very very slowly.

My first serve percentage is about 70% and most 3.5 players cannot attack it. But I have no idea if it is going wide, T, or body. About 80% end up going down the Deuce T and Ad wide. So it is good most are randomly going to the opponent's backhand but that is not my intent. It is all random... Opponent's think I am targeting their backhand.

slowing down on flat/slice serve does help with directional control. my trouble with kick serve is it goes into the net if I slow down.

 

[johnmccabe]

Agree with @Shroud on this. It may actually be easier to just hit to a target in mind and tune/adjust based on error (trial and error) than looking at the theory/physics behind this.

But if you insist, direction of racket face on contact mainly determines which direction the balls goes.

I'm just not a very intuitive learner. For flat serve, I can change the timing of pronation to adjust racket face. pronating a little early gets the ball towards right hand side for right-handed. that does work for me. But for kick serve, I can't figure out which "knob" to turn in order to adjust racket face. Some days my kick would go more to the T and two days later they would go more towards the wide. I have absolutely no clue what I did differently. although you could say, the goal is just to get it over the net if I'm going for a kick serve. It's just very unsatisfying...

 

[Morch Us]

There are different ways. Adjusting pronation start timing slightly is a good way. On top of that.
1. Try aligning your body starting position slightly differently. It only needs very minor change of angle.
2. Try slightly early or late torso rotation. One catch is that if you adjust torso rotation too much it will affect the amount of kick/spin as well. ( early torso rotation will make your kick a top slice, which may not be a totally bad thing since it may provide a better angle).
3. Adjust/modify the racket path slightly. Again it may affect the spin if you do it too much, since the main element controlling spin is the racket path.
4. Slight adjustment in toss. This is probably the last thing I will experiment with, since it can really affect your consistency on serve.

The key is that only very minor change in angle is needed to change direction of serve from corner to T. So any of the above are not supposed to affect the spin/kick much.

But for kick serve, I can't figure out which "knob" to turn in order to adjust racket face.

 

[johnmccabe]

There are different ways. Adjusting pronation start timing slightly is a good way. On top of that.
1. Try aligning your body starting position slightly differently. It only needs very minor change of angle.
2. Try slightly early or late torso rotation. One catch is that if you adjust torso rotation too much it will affect the amount of kick/spin as well. ( early torso rotation will make your kick a top slice, which may not be a totally bad thing since it may provide a better angle).
3. Adjust/modify the racket path slightly. Again it may affect the spin if you do it too much, since the main element controlling spin is the racket path.
4. Slight adjustment in toss. This is probably the last thing I will experiment with, since it can really affect your consistency on serve.

The key is that only very minor change in angle is needed to change direction of serve from corner to T. So any of the above are not supposed to affect the spin/kick much.

Thank you!!!

 

[Chas Tennis]

I couldn't find any old threads or youtube video about how to control the direction of kick serve. The only video that sees to be useful basically says toss to 11 oclock and swing more left to right on ad court to kick it wide. Can anyone point me to a more comprehensive guide on this topic? Thank a bunch!!

Thread Junior Twist Serve had a lot of information on the kick serve.

The poster's son had a high level kick serve and it was compared to Stosur's kick serve. It was very similar but the 'closed' tilt of the racket face was less, 9 d. vs ,say, 13 d for Stosur. Otherwise, the serve compared surprisingly closely. But the full racket motion details were hard to describe in words. The tilt on the racket face, a centimeter before impact, is hardly ever discussed or pointed out in videos.

The racket face orientation before, during and after impact was too complicated to be described by a few of the usual undefined tennis terms. Study videos.

Play this back at 0.25x and also examine the racket going through impact frame-by-frame. To single frame on Youtube use the period & comma keys.

Note- the side-to-side angle is changing before impact because of ISR + ?pronation. After impact, the racket head has additional impact effects depending on where the ball contacted the strings. The elevation of the racket head is changing because of ulnar deviation +?. This is a qualitative word description with actual angle estimates not very accurate. Your best description is in the video.

Could someone say a few simple words to describe the orientation of Stosur's spine/chest during the kick serve. Best to view with at least two orthogonal camera angles (at right angles). I can't describe the orientation of her spine/chest during the serve.

 

[Hit 'em clean]

If you can hit a kick serve that means you have the path/motion correct. After that it's just like any other serve, groundstroke, or volley in tennis

a) racquet face angle... have racquet face awareness
b) always have a target in mind
c) always be looking to hit a part of the ball

Don't alter anything else... if you're alternating your pronation every time you hit the serve... that's bad and why you can't control the direction. The motion doesn't change but the abc's above do. Directional control is a trial and error thing that's why so many of us are saying you need to hit a bucket of balls and nobody offers specific videos on how to hit a particular serve in a specific direction. If you know how to hit the type of serve... it's just practice from there to learn where to contact the ball, racquet face angle, and what target in your head works.

Sometimes a faster way to learn directional control on serves is to go to extremes. Say you serve well up the T's but not out wide. To learn to serve out wide try to hit serves that land outside the alleys. Sometimes you have to go too far to learn/feel what needs to happen and then just dial it back. Don't be subtle about your misses and you'll learn a lot quicker. People for example that never learn to hit really wide serves have never tried to see how extreme they can be in practice.

I learned to hit slice and kick servers ridiculously short and wide by just being silly and seeing if I could do it. I had to hit slower and loopier balls, but I learned the feel, arc, spins and speeds to control the direction. I never altered my serve motion for these things, but rather the abc's in various ways.

 

[johnmccabe]

Sometimes a faster way to learn directional control on serves is to go to extremes. Say you serve well up the T's but not out wide. To learn to serve out wide try to hit serves that land outside the alleys. Sometimes you have to go too far to learn/feel what needs to happen and then just dial it back. Don't be subtle about your misses and you'll learn a lot quicker. People for example that never learn to hit really wide serves have never tried to see how extreme they can be in practice.

I learned to hit slice and kick servers ridiculously short and wide by just being silly and seeing if I could do it. I had to hit slower and loopier balls, but I learned the feel, arc, spins and speeds to control the direction. I never altered my serve motion for these things, but rather the abc's in various ways.

This sounds like a great thing to try! Thanks!!!

 

[Chas Tennis]

This video, from the above camera view, shows the evolution of the side-to-side (azimuthal) angle on the tennis racket face. ISR is most important for that angle and must be controlled. The uppermost body(line between the shoulders) turn is also important. Notice the angle of the chest at impact, it is more to the side than for the slice or flat serves, but it is not 'to the side' or 'stay sideways' as is often incorrectly said.

Frank Salazar server from Fuzzy Yellow Balls videos.

Side view showing closed tilt of the racket face. See 6:05 for 'racket face closed' comments.

 

[eah123]

For me, the placement of my back foot is the #1 factor for controlling ball direction on the kick serve. I right handed and have a narrow platform stance. If I want to go out very wide, I put my back foot almost touching the baseline. If I'm aiming more toward the center of the box, my back foot is farther behind the baseline. I think this is because the position of the feet controls the direction of my leg drive/weight transfer forward into the court.