Bobs tennis
Semi-Pro
Experimenting today I found using a grip on the edge between continental and eastern worked well even slicing serve. I know we talk about continental but has anyone else come back slightly toward eastern
Serve Grip
- Thread starter Bobs tennis
- Start date
Mountain Ghost
Professional
It depends on how "perfected" your serve motion is ... .. ... If you're "there" technically ... you may shift the grip for different serves ... ... ... If your basic form is still in "development" .. stick with a continental ~ MG
Wise one
Hall of Fame
That's called the "Australian" grip, and it's what I use for serving and all forehand shots.
Bobs tennis
Semi-Pro
Great so it's not another dead end. I have always naturally moved toward a eastern backhand grip on serve but trying this grip I actually got more spin and control...Thanks
D
Deleted member 23235
Guest
i always found i got less spin (slice, kick) as i move from eastern bh to frying pan (western fh)
FiReFTW
Legend
Serve is juat about contact point on the ball + swingpath + racquet orientation.
You can serve any serve with a continental by adjusting all 3 things, some like to switch grips because that changes the racquet face angle so they naturally get that, but you cam serve all serves with any of the grips around continental as long as its not far off.
Just about adjusting so the contact point and racquet face is different.
You can serve any serve with a continental by adjusting all 3 things, some like to switch grips because that changes the racquet face angle so they naturally get that, but you cam serve all serves with any of the grips around continental as long as its not far off.
Just about adjusting so the contact point and racquet face is different.
D
Deleted member 23235
Guest
i always thought that was a progression, because it makes it easier to make contact when first starting out?
maybe servign in australian is good up to a certain level? and arguably better for anyone under 5.0 (ie. easier to hit, and max spin/speed not necessary because no one is crushing returns)
anyone know of any pros using australian to serve?
It's not so common anymore, but back in those days (80s-90s) it wasn't uncommon. Lendl, Edberg both used grips towards the backhand, for instance.
D
Deleted member 23235
Guest
i think we're talking about 2 different tings...
australian is a forehand grip, closer to easternfh
i thought edberg used a serve grip closer to easternbh (never studied lendl)
Ah, ... I was talking about a midway grip between conti and backhand. not forhand. My bad.
Wise one
Hall of Fame
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Bobs tennis
Semi-Pro
Becker's grip seems to be just about on edge-conti to eastern forehand and really what I mean
Bobs tennis
Semi-Pro
Ok that is exactly what i'm using at this time but with that first serve grip I seem to be getting good spine. Incidently look how small a grip both of those players are using
Both of these are big guys don't be surprised if it isn't as small as you think.
that just doesn't sound right.
Wise one
Hall of Fame
Right, that's the Australian grip, which I use.
Hmgraphite1
Hall of Fame
Always thought of Becker as a flat serve, did he put much spin on it?
Shroud
G.O.A.T.
Tis one reason @J011yroger beats you
D
Deleted member 23235
Guest
i’ve studied chang... i’ll underhand serve my way to victory on red clay..
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Shroud
G.O.A.T.
Lmao. In a way you have studied Lendl.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Wise one
Hall of Fame
A few years back, I suffered a severe back injury (herniated disks). I was hardly able to walk for almost a year. Gradually I improved, and I could hit around on the court, but I still could not bend my back to serve, so I served underhanded when some of the guys needed a fourth for doubles. I held serve at love several times, using a sharply spun drop-shot type of serve.
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Wise one
Hall of Fame
Well, it was that or nothing. The opponents had surprising difficulty returning it in a way that I or my partner could not easily volley away.
Bobs tennis
Semi-Pro
Im not the best but I to played a friend that hurt his back and primarily used a under handed serve...WOW was that difficult. Worse when u started moving in he would hit his normal serve and the whole thing just got so difficult.
As i know Australian grip from conti a bit towards forehand..
TennisDawg
Hall of Fame
I use conti for flat, slice, top spin serve. Do you change your Toss location when moving
Grip towards EFH ?
My flat serve toss is further into the court and in front...it probably lands about a foot inside the court. My spin serves the ball lands on top of the baseline or a few inches behind due to my lack of consistency.
Chas Tennis
G.O.A.T.
The grip will relate to the racket orientation at impact. For a high level serve, flat or slice, the racket shaft should tilt to the left at impact when viewed from behind looking along the trajectory and appear near vertical from the side. Your service motion may vary from a high level serve.
Take several videos of your serves, slice or flat, to catch just before impact to see your racket orientation. With 30 fps you need to take several videos to capture each one just before impact. It is best to get just before impact to avoid impact effects that move the racket head. You need small motion blur to see where the racket head faces. Use bright sunlight for smallest motion blur.
Then hold your racket in the same position you see for impact and change the grip around.
Since the racket is at an angle at impact when viewed looking along the ball's trajectory, rotation of the racket strings by grip change will affect both the side-to-side serve placement and the high-low serve placement. The grip change affects your unknown technique in an unknown way.
Impact involves some string cupping and the effect of that on the ball trajectory is not known.
Take several videos of your serves, slice or flat, to catch just before impact to see your racket orientation. With 30 fps you need to take several videos to capture each one just before impact. It is best to get just before impact to avoid impact effects that move the racket head. You need small motion blur to see where the racket head faces. Use bright sunlight for smallest motion blur.
Then hold your racket in the same position you see for impact and change the grip around.
Since the racket is at an angle at impact when viewed looking along the ball's trajectory, rotation of the racket strings by grip change will affect both the side-to-side serve placement and the high-low serve placement. The grip change affects your unknown technique in an unknown way.
Impact involves some string cupping and the effect of that on the ball trajectory is not known.
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TennisDawg
Hall of Fame
Thanks for your info. This probably should be a separate thread, but if
using a full EFH grip, racquet edge leading (to avoid waiters tray) full pronation on flat serve is there an adjustment to the toss to prevent serving the ball several feet wide? Like for a rightie serving into the Deuce court and missing 3 feet wide when aiming for the T? My thoughts are to move the toss so at contact it is directly in front of my body.
t_pac
Semi-Pro
Chas Tennis
G.O.A.T.
These are high speed videos made by Fuzzy Yellow Balls that were processed into composite pictures by Toly. The server is Frank Salazar. These are the only overhead camera views with serve types identified that I know of.
What is going on here is that the kick serve needs the racket to be rising much more as it impacts the ball. As you look at the racket you are seeing it rotate clockwise from ISR and maybe some other motions (elbow extension?.....). But for each serve the racket strings at impact are more or less pointing in the same side-to-side direction (azimuth). (Side-to-side orientation can cause the ball to bounce 3 feet wide of the T as in your post.)
Look carefully at Salazar's uppermost body and chest and where it points compared to the flat and slice serves. He is facing more sideways for the kick than for the flat and slice serves. (He is not facing "sideways" as is often recommended but "more sideways".) In the post below I measured the degrees of rotation for the three rackets in this picture. Unfortunately, we don't have the beginning of the rotation shown in this picture. Salazar adjusted his racket face to be rising at impact AND to be pointing in the same direction by timing and not turning his upper body as much for impact for the kick serve. The original Youtube videos are available on FYB.
It would of course be better to see more high level serves from the above camera view. That would confirm that the techniques shown here are typical of current ATP serving techniques and their variety.
You could adjust the side-to-side impact by a similar technique but you may have to learn about other factors for your technique. Or you could copy the high level serve in all details including the grip.
Rare Fuzzy Yellow Balls overhead videos processed by Toly into composite pictures.
Measurements for these 3 pictures:
1) Slice - 70 d. racket head rotation.
2) Flat - 82 d. racket head rotation.
3) Kick - 54 d. racket head rotation.
Similar thread to this one only on the kick serve.
https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/ind...in-serve-need-pronation.578063/#post-10824274
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TennisDawg
Hall of Fame
I serve with a continental grip on flat, slice and TS serve. I don’t hit kick serves due to lower back issues. It could be I’m ending up in a side motion at contact using EFH grip or contacting late with too much racquet face angle. I’m curious because I have a monster flat serve using EFH (much bigger than conti grip) if only I could control it. A lot of rain here so I have to wait to try it.
Chas Tennis
G.O.A.T.
I have posted this many times - and can't recall a reply saying that anyone sees the two racket head rotations. The high level serve has two main racket rotations: 1) from ISR (internal shoulder rotation) causing the racket head to rotate around a mostly vertical axis (upper arm) and 2) another from swinging motions that cause the racket head to close as it moves forward. Both these motions are clear in this video of the racket head at impact.
A Waiter's Tray serving technique uses mostly swinging closed for racket head speed and little ISR.
If you do not use a high level technique or WT another alternate technique is to stick the arm more out to the side and use ISR to rotate the straight arm and racket or bent elbow arm and racket so that the racket head mostly closes as it is hitting the ball. It would appear differently than the high level serve in the video above. If you want to get heavy pace your must make the racket head close faster. I believe - but have no evidence or publications - that controlling very rapid racket closing may present control problems vs the two racket head rotations seen in the above video. If true, control may be one of the biggest advantages of the high level serving technique and not simply pace.
The above technique uses ISR but it results in rapid racket head closing as the head moves forward. Bigservesofthands can do this technique for high pace. In an early post, Bigservesofthand said that he had control problems. ?? I speculate that this technique might show high-low trajectory control problems and that controlling how closed the racket is at impact is the cause.
Take a high speed video of your serve and compare your technique to that of high level serves.
If you have back issues be especially careful on what you do for serving.
A Waiter's Tray serving technique uses mostly swinging closed for racket head speed and little ISR.
If you do not use a high level technique or WT another alternate technique is to stick the arm more out to the side and use ISR to rotate the straight arm and racket or bent elbow arm and racket so that the racket head mostly closes as it is hitting the ball. It would appear differently than the high level serve in the video above. If you want to get heavy pace your must make the racket head close faster. I believe - but have no evidence or publications - that controlling very rapid racket closing may present control problems vs the two racket head rotations seen in the above video. If true, control may be one of the biggest advantages of the high level serving technique and not simply pace.
The above technique uses ISR but it results in rapid racket head closing as the head moves forward. Bigservesofthands can do this technique for high pace. In an early post, Bigservesofthand said that he had control problems. ?? I speculate that this technique might show high-low trajectory control problems and that controlling how closed the racket is at impact is the cause.
Take a high speed video of your serve and compare your technique to that of high level serves.
If you have back issues be especially careful on what you do for serving.
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TennisDawg
Hall of Fame
Thanks, I’m thinking my contact needs to be much earlier with the efh grip. I have a reliable serve with good spin, but can’t get pop on it for flat serve, using continental, it’s not weak but I would like more power.
TennisDawg
Hall of Fame
By sticking arm out to side does that mean toss more to the right using the efh grip?
TennisDawg
Hall of Fame
J011yroger
Talk Tennis Guru
Chas Tennis
G.O.A.T.
It is just a micellaneous technique that I have seen a few times, no track record, no performance record, no feedback on safety......
Arm more to right or to front, I don't know.
Hmgraphite1
Hall of Fame
If your not getting power with continental, it could be that your mistiming the pronation or your swingpath is not directly inline with the target. The pronation adds way more speed than any wrist flexion and allows you to toss the ball further forward where you want to drive yourself foreward.
Imo
Chas Tennis
G.O.A.T.
Neither the swing paths of the hand or racket are iinline with the target for a high level serve.
Hmgraphite1
Hall of Fame
I would think for a flat serve the racquet swingpath would be inline for 1 frame before to 1 frame after
Hmgraphite1
Hall of Fame
If you look at Feds slo mo its "more" inline for the first than the second, no?
Chas Tennis
G.O.A.T.
The frame before impact and close or at impact is shown in this picture. Since the face of the racket is pointing in tow different directions those frame cannot be aligned toward the target. ISR rotates up to about 3000 degrees per second. That is 3 degrees per millisecond. Impact complicates how the racket is facing. I don't see any evidence for 'alignment to the target' in these pictures or the video in post #37 that show impact at 6,000 fps.
Hmgraphite1
Hall of Fame
Alignment to swingpath to me has nothing to do with racquet face, it's the vertical axis of the racquet shaft moving through space toward the target. I would suggest tracing the center top tip of the racquet as "the swingpath". For flat with minimal spin I would theorize it would be straight line. In practice, it starts out a little to right do to loading at drop but as it comes up it "levels" out and goes toward target.The frame before impact and close or at impact is shown in this picture. Since the face of the racket is pointing in tow different directions those frame cannot be aligned toward the target. ISR rotates up to about 3000 degrees per second. That is 3 degrees per millisecond. Impact complicates how the racket is facing. I don't see any evidence for 'alignment to the target' in these pictures or the video in post #37 that show impact at 6,000 fps.
Searah
Semi-Pro
i can't figure out the kick serve.. i even paid for coaching lessons and the coach just kept telling me to angle the racket more so the strings are facing more towards the sky..
or to be more accurate.. the twist serve.. i can get a kick even if it's slow.. but i can't get it to bounce to the right. or bounce away.. always in straight line.
or to be more accurate.. the twist serve.. i can get a kick even if it's slow.. but i can't get it to bounce to the right. or bounce away.. always in straight line.
