Serve advice (Flat, Slice, Kick)

[JoshXXX]

Hey, have been trying to incorporate a lot of the advice this community has given me on my serve. Below some videos on recent progress, consistently getting 160-180kmh (100-110mph) on the flat serve now.

Would appreciate any feedback on how to get incremental power and spin. Video shows flat, slice, and then kick.

Thank you!

 

[JoshXXX]

bump

 

[Dragy]

Hey man, nice serves — nothing jumping on me in particular which shall have dreadful effect. You can work on:
- Putting your back foot behind the front foot, not over-stepping
- Possibly related: you seem to kind of cease your forward momentum while in trophy, and then push from almost static position (you possibly use that step-over to stop the momentum actually).

What I suggest trying: lean into the court until you drive up. It shall be like cannot “freeze” in trophy position, you shall fall forward if you don’t drive up.

This is to try — and see if it works. Might need some toss tinkering as well, maybe tossing a tad more into the court.

Otherwise, looks like high level serve — nobody has much to say on these slow-mo videos. If you can hit those reliably — good for you, and a possible coach would ask for your patterns and struggles in actual matchplay. What you personally think you lack in serve department when it’s time to serve a set out?

 

[JoshXXX]

thank you for taking the time and for giving this detailed feedback. Will work on that, good points.

no issues in the match really, could probably work on getting the 1st % up more, roughly around 50-70% but never 80%+ for a match.

 

[eah123]

I think your flat and kick serves look very good!

The slice serve does not slice a lot. For me your contact is too flat and not enough spin. Some suggestions to improve your slice would be - 1) start the serve the serve with your forearm more internally rotated. It doesn't have to be as extreme as Raonic in the video below, but that's the idea. 2) contact the ball more on the side like Patrick suggests in the second video I linked.

 

[Digital Atheist]

Not much to add since the serve is good. There is just one thing ... your tossing arm comes down too early as your racquet enters the drop. Not a big deal when the legs are fresh since you can recover from that, but later on when you are getting tired that can cause collapsing from the trunk, and the ball will start to go into the net.

 

[Dragy]

Not much to add since the serve is good. There is just one thing ... your tossing arm comes down too early as your racquet enters the drop. Not a big deal when the legs are fresh since you can recover from that, but later on when you are getting tired that can cause collapsing from the trunk, and the ball will start to go into the net.

I don’t agree. His tossing arm stays high enough long enough, and then drops fast, in very good fashion. Here’s leg drive initiation moment, racquet head passing back:

Overall, keeping tossing arm up for too long is a spread mistake, because they were advocating this too loud for too long. Generally, as “cartwheel” begins, off-arm elbow shall be getting in line with shoulders immediately, and then get tucked in.

 

[johnmccabe]

Small thing... The left hand starts the toss from outside of the leg. It probably doesn't matter that much, but don't remember any pro doing that. You may get more power and spin making contact further into the court.

 

[Digital Atheist]

Overall, keeping tossing arm up for too long is a spread mistake

That is true. Trying to leep the toss arm while you are driving at the ball or trying to do shoulder over shoulder only prevents the trunk from adding power and that is a mistake. I like this guys take on that particular aspect and it is something I am familiar with:

However that's not what I'm talking about since keeping the tossing arm up for too long is possibly worse. There is a relatively small window among ATP servers where the toss arm begins to drop relative to the positon of the racquet (with some variation, but most of that variation is when the toss arm stays up higher for longer as the racquet goes into the drop, and not the other way around - Federer, Zverev, & Rune for example).

Let's put it this way - you won't find many, if any, ATP players with a tossing arm position like the image I posted. I would say Taylor Fritz drops his arm earlier than anyone else I'm aware of and he is known for doing that (partly because he has a late entry into the classic trophy position, as did Roddick). However, other players using that method like Zverev and Sinner still keep their tossing arm up and it stays up for several frames after their head begins to rise as the racquet enters the drop. That's not necessary either and close to impossible for me, and Imo a good reference is that the toss arm and the racquet drop in unison or close to parallel. That is what I would be aiming for and it won't take much to change.

I speak from experience as someone who used to have almost exactly the same problem, and addressing some other technical areas actually corrected that for me, but nonetheless it was a small issue for the reasons I outlined. @JoshXXX, you may not consider it a problem in which case that's fine and you are good to go, but I would encourage you to take a look at this video.

And compare the timing to when you drop your arm. I already did several for you (including Thiem above).

Skeletal analysis - Roddick in yellow, Murray in white.

And yours again:

Not tragic by any stretch, and Thiem above looks like a good position to aim for. That's my take anyway, and you are free to take it or leave it!

 

[eah123]

Here is some additional encouragement to work on your slice serve!

 

[Chas Tennis]

In thread, The Tennis Serve- What's True?

Gavin MacMillan, Sabalenka's serve coach, is seen in Youtube interviews. One thing that he introduced for me was arm inversion for the tossing arm. The palm is often under the ball tossing, but then turns over before it is brought down.

I had never heard of that, we were calling it 'arm inversion'. Your serve does not seem to have that being done in an orderly way.

I looked at many ATP servers and arm inversion was present and so I became aware of it for the first time. There was forum discussion of why arm inversion was being done with several posters giving opinions.

Search the above thread for 'arm inversion' and read those posts. Look at some ATP serves so that your are convinced. Change it or ignore it.

Gavin MacMillan gives Youtube interviews and mentions what he knows about the serve. After learning abouit arm inversion I was sold that Gavin is someone that might know a lot about the serve. Play his videos, captions on and lkisten carefully to all he says. He advocates Spinal Engine and that was another thing that was ne to me. About half the thread now involves Spinal Engine, which I cannot explain, or show in videos.

Your serve looks pretty good. To analyze it, it should be compared to an ATP high level serve taken from the same camera angle. It is time consuming to find ATP camera angles that match poster's serves. A common camera angle is behind the server looking along the ball's trajectory. You might find some ATM servers with that camera angle and then record your serves again for comparisons. The serve also needs a side camera view - perpendicular to the trajectory is verg good but baseline is probably more common. Indoor lighting is not so good so your camera's automatic exposure control will cause motion blur. Outdoor sun light is much stronger and your camera will select a faster shutter speed. It looks to me that the angle between your forearm and racket, that changes during the serve, might be too small. Usually impact is compared. But if the camera angles are too different the comparison is not accurate.

This is a good camera angle looking along the balls trajectory and seeing impact. 240 fps with small motion blur. From stands, camera up some.

In other words,
1) Improve your videos. Your feet to racket top could be twice as large.
2) Select a matching Youtube and paste it below your video and you can compare right on the forum post.

 

[TennisCJC]

I am not a certified coach but I'll give you 2 things to consider - take it or leave it.

1. Your toss is a bit too high. It looks like it drops 3 feet from peak to contact. Try lower it so the drop is around 6 to 12 inches. A high toss forces you to pause or stop your swing before the racket drop and then you have to time a ball that is dropping fairly fast. I noticed that Sinner has lowered his toss this year and he is serving better than ever. Marin Cilic lowered his toss just before he won the US Open.
2. You bring up the back foot just past the front foot in you pin point stance. By "past", I mean your back foot goes a bit to the right of your front foot relative to a line pointing at the service box. I think majority of coaches would want you to bring up the back foot to stay behind the front foot or even so the toes of the back foot are about mid-foot in relation to the front foot. You get good hip and shoulder rotation and there is a bit of separation between your hips and shoulders so that's all good. But, if you keep that foot back a little more, you might get a touch more shoulder rotation which will help with power and spin. be sure to keep the shoulders back a peak of rotation until you start the forward swing.

Try it and see let me know if it helps or if I have destroyed your serve.

 

[JoshXXX]

Thanks all for the detailed and thoughtful feedback. will definitely try to incorporate most of this going forward.

Made the mistake of trying some of this out during a club league match on Sunday.... the Raonic curling of the wrist pre serve added some power and slice. however, all my 2nd serve kicks starting to slice and went mostly out.... ha!

Clearly something to work on during practice

 

[ChaelAZ]

Thanks all for the detailed and thoughtful feedback. will definitely try to incorporate most of this going forward.

Made the mistake of trying some of this out during a club league match on Sunday.... the Raonic curling of the wrist pre serve added some power and slice. however, all my 2nd serve kicks starting to slice and went mostly out.... ha!

Clearly something to work on during practice

Too funny. Can't tell you how many times I end up watching matches on one of my match days and end up trying SOMETHING I saw from a pro or such...with counter productive results as well. Had to stop that and only do that on practice days.