Service grip: Continental or Eastern?

[jmoore1]

Hey guys:
I'm 4.5 player with a pretty effective serve. I use a Continental grip for 1st an 2nd serves. I started to experiment (for about a month) with turning my grip more toward and Eastern BH grip on second serves. I was able to get a little more topspin and kick, but it felt like this grip created more tension in my serving arm. I really believe the key to an effective serve is a loose, fluid serving motion with as little tension in the arm as possible. Any pro's/con's to serving with an Eastern BH grip on serves?? I'm leaning toward staying with the Continental.

 

[theartoftennis]

Yes, the Eastern Backhand provides sort of a resistance to getting the racquet down. Try keeping your index knuckle on that same edge of the handle, but kind of turn your hand a little counterclockwise so your index finger is pointing up. This should help with comfort and racquet-head speed.

 

[coolvinny]

I use EBH on all serves (usually pistol, but sometimes more hammer on 2nd serves). Over time the tension will go away. I’ve never had an injury issue from serving this way although for a while I recall my thumb muscle would get sore. I’ve been using it for about 10 months and have probably hit 25,000 serves this way, and now I’m more EBH than when I started using it (there are degrees of how in top of handle you are).

I do seem to remember that when I moved the EBH to more of a pistol, my hand got more relaxed…maybe something to try.

 

[nyta2]

the ebh helps close the face to get more spin (like the western grip on the fh helps close the the face for more topspin)
i find that i lose some pace (compared to conti grip), using the ebh (but have more spin, and margin for error)
definitely find it harder to hit a flat with ebh (just like i find it harder to hit a flat fh with a western grip)... possible... but just harder to find the right wrist angle consistently (compared to conti)... that said i rarely hit flat.
side note, i used have trouble (finding) switching from ebh to conti (eg. for bh slice, 2hbh, fh slice), which was the main reason i stayed with conti (at the time was in the process of switching my 2hbh to be less western)

 

[coolvinny]

the ebh helps close the face to get more spin (like the western grip on the fh helps close the the face for more topspin)
i find that i lose some pace (compared to conti grip), using the ebh (but have more spin, and margin for error)
definitely find it harder to hit a flat with ebh (just like i find it harder to hit a flat fh with a western grip)... possible... but just harder to find the right wrist angle consistently (compared to conti)... that said i rarely hit flat.
side note, i used have trouble (finding) switching from ebh to conti (eg. for bh slice, 2hbh, fh slice), which was the main reason i stayed with conti (at the time was in the process of switching my 2hbh to be less wester

For whatever reason, I don’t find it any harder to hit flat with ebh (Edit: provided it’s pistol/trigger not hammer)…but I almost never try to hit flat because I’m too short to do that with consistency. As for losing some pace with ebh, yes I think that’s true but at the same time pretty easy to compensate for through more leg drive or more torso rotation. I find I can open up my torso more using ebh than using conti (and a coach who is former ATP is the one who encouraged me to open up my torso more given my ebh grip - and incidentally he uses all conti and various degrees of ebh grips and not just for 2nd serves).

 

[Chas Tennis]

"Similar threads" as old as the ones for this thread are more likely to inject disproved ideas back into the forums. Also, longer threads that largely ignore biomechanics often have more posts. Suggest weighting the "Similar threads" toward more recent threads.