Two new tips on the serve

[sureshs]

Over this long weekend, I developed two new tips for the serve. As a background, all of you know that very few recreational players have a good consistent serve, and no amount of videos or lessons can make them improve. A few players who played as juniors and are now in the rec category are an exception, as are some really tall men who can get a very good serve in the box about 10% of the time (5% if you disallow foot faults).

The reason that traditional methods of teaching the serve have failed rec players is because they doesn't provide references to the body of the player. Humans understand the periphery of their own body very well. It starts from the time they explore their environment as babies. Octopuses are also keenly aware of the periphery of their bodies. It is considered a key ingredient of what we call awareness or consciousness which makes us feel different from the things around us and establishes our identity.

But saying things like place your toss on the imaginary shelf up there or hit the ball up and out are not something players can feel with their body. Focusing on the body rather than the ball or the swing or the racket leads to the following two tips:

1. Bring the tossing arm shoulder as close to the corresponding ear or chin as possible.

2. Keep the serving arm elbow bent as you start the forward swing.

Everything else will correctly flow from these two reference points.

 

[Dartagnan64]

i.e. get in trophy position before you hit the ball. Sound advice.

 

[sureshs]

i.e. get in trophy position before you hit the ball. Sound advice.

Trophy is an abstract concept lost on rec players. They imitate it in shadow swings pretending to be Sampras but cannot relate to it when they actually start serving and lose coordination and wobble all over. They need the body-based checkpoints which they can relate to. That is why these two tips are revolutionary.

 

[Dartagnan64]

Trophy is an abstract concept lost on rec players. They imitate it in shadow swings pretending to be Sampras but cannot relate to it when they actually start serving and lose coordination and wobble all over. They need the body-based checkpoints which they can relate to. That is why these two tips are revolutionary.

Really? Abstract? I look at trophy and say, "hey, i need to hold my left arm up higher and bend my elbow more if i want to serve better." It's on literally every tennis trophy at our club. So it's not even remotely "abstract".

Now Pat the Dog is abstract if you ask me. What dog? Where do i Pat him?

 

[sureshs]

Really? Abstract? I look at trophy and say, "hey, i need to hold my left arm up higher and bend my elbow more if i want to serve better." It's on literally every tennis trophy at our club. So it's not even remotely "abstract".

Now Pat the Dog is abstract if you ask me. What dog? Where do i Pat him?

Pat does not play at the club anymore after he turned 80 and had a fall when chasing a topspin lob.

There are 100s of Sampras videos and no rec player has learned from them.

 

[J011yroger]

J

 

[kaninfaan]

Over this long weekend, I developed two new tips for the serve.
...

...That is why these two tips are revolutionary.

...There are 100s of Sampras videos and no rec player has learned from them.

ROFL

 

[Kevo]

But saying things like place your toss on the imaginary shelf up there or hit the ball up and out are not something players can feel with their body. Focusing on the body rather than the ball or the swing or the racket leads to the following two tips:

1. Bring the tossing arm shoulder as close to the corresponding ear or chin as possible.

2. Keep the serving arm elbow bent as you start the forward swing.

Everything else will correctly flow from these two reference points.

If only it were that easy. People don't have good serves because they don't practice good technique. I've worked with a lot of players over the years, many beginners, some decent juniors, and some good and bad adult players.

The biggest obstacle for players in my mind is they simply don't practice good technique unless they have someone there to make sure they actually do it. I can't tell you how many times I have spent an hour with some one and developed with them a relatively good, sometimes really good toss and arm motion. I send them away with instructions to only practice what we've worked on until our next lesson. Then they come back to the next lesson, and it's like we never had the first. We have to basically start over. So there's a constant back and forth between the new and the old. Most people are very reluctant to actually use a new motion. Many people can't even tell if they are doing the old one or the new one. I find myself explaining to people way too often, that if it doesn't feel strange or awkward then they didn't actually do anything different. Even after explaining this over and over to people they rarely get it. Many times it's better to start them over from scratch on serve even to the point of making them toss differently just to break the cycle.

 

[Raul_SJ]

Really? Abstract? I look at trophy and say, "hey, i need to hold my left arm up higher and bend my elbow more if i want to serve better." It's on literally every tennis trophy at our club. So it's not even remotely "abstract".

Now Pat the Dog is abstract if you ask me. What dog? Where do i Pat him?

Macci calls it "Tap" the dog. Don't "Pat" the dog. "Tap the Dog" is not abstract; it is as real as trophy position.

Granted, every player achieves trophy position whereas not every player achieves Tap the Dog. But "Tap the Dog" position is always there for Djok on normal height rally balls.

 

[sureshs]

I send them away with instructions to only practice what we've worked on until our next lesson.

That doesn't work, because they need to be playing their social matches. If they don't, they quickly go out of circulation and can't find partners anymore and become "Bob who doesn't play anymore because he is working on his serve." If they try to practice the new stuff in a match, their doubles or even singles partner or even a casual hitting partner gets fed up with their double faults and massive misses.

It is like work. The boss and coworkers like the guy who keeps delivering something useful and hate the guy who goes into a shell learning "new" stuff for 3 months before he reemerges, though the company always says it encourages learning and training. Life is brutal, man.

 

[Kevo]

That doesn't work, because they need to be playing their social matches.

It doesn't seem to matter what their social match status is. I've seen it with kids who don't play matches, high school kids during the summer when they aren't playing matches, and teens and adults that play at such a basic level that the serve they learn to hit just turning the racquet into the ball is as good as the frying pan serve they usually hit. There's something inherent with so many people, myself included, where they really struggle to get out of their comfort zone.

 

[Digital Atheist]

That doesn't work, because they need to be playing their social matches. If they don't, they quickly go out of circulation and can't find partners anymore and become "Bob who doesn't play anymore because he is working on his serve." If they try to practice the new stuff in a match, their doubles or even singles partner or even a casual hitting partner gets fed up with their double faults and massive misses.

OK, so what's your advice to a player looking to make changes and improve? Reading the above, it almost seems like you don't think it's possible.

 

[jga111]

OK, so what's your advice to a player looking to make changes and improve? Reading the above, it almost seems like you don't think it's possible.

Practice loads between matches. Or just take timeout. That’s what I’ve done with my league.

 

[Kevo]

OK, so what's your advice to a player looking to make changes and improve? Reading the above, it almost seems like you don't think it's possible.

I try to get my students, especially the kids that are engaged in tournament play, to pick one or two things to work on during each match. They set up their own match goals depending on what they are working on and judge their success in the match not by the score, but by how well they accomplish their match goal(s).

When we work on serves one of the first match goal successes we want to have is a no double faults match. We try to accomplish this by developing a good spin serve and using it exclusively during matches until they achieve that goal. Once they have a spin serve they are confident in then we can work on really building up some pace on the first serve because they know they won't double fault.

There are all sorts of clever and interesting shot goals and strategy goals you can come up with and it really makes match play less stressful and more interesting I think. Not to mention you can really build your toolbox of skills working this way. I think a lot of people go into matches without concrete goals and they don't really build their game that much during matches.

 

[Len D L]

That doesn't work, because they need to be playing their social matches. If they don't, they quickly go out of circulation and can't find partners anymore and become "Bob who doesn't play anymore because he is working on his serve."

Or because he became "Bob who doesn't play anymore because he is reading sureshs serve tips on the WWW."

 

[CornOnTheCob]

I tried teaching my dad how to shoot a jump shot and no matter how many times I tell him to follow through and keep his elbow in he still looks like a walrus chucking a boulder

 

[5263]

Over this long weekend, I developed two new tips for the serve. As a background, all of you know that very few recreational players have a good consistent serve, and no amount of videos or lessons can make them improve. A few players who played as juniors and are now in the rec category are an exception, as are some really tall men who can get a very good serve in the box about 10% of the time (5% if you disallow foot faults).

The reason that traditional methods of teaching the serve have failed rec players is because they doesn't provide references to the body of the player. Humans understand the periphery of their own body very well. It starts from the time they explore their environment as babies. Octopuses are also keenly aware of the periphery of their bodies. It is considered a key ingredient of what we call awareness or consciousness which makes us feel different from the things around us and establishes our identity.

But saying things like place your toss on the imaginary shelf up there or hit the ball up and out are not something players can feel with their body. Focusing on the body rather than the ball or the swing or the racket leads to the following two tips:

1. Bring the tossing arm shoulder as close to the corresponding ear or chin as possible.

2. Keep the serving arm elbow bent as you start the forward swing.

Everything else will correctly flow from these two reference points.

These tips seem to assume the player knows quite a few other things, like where to toss and how to launch upwards to contact to name a couple of critical fundamentals. Is that an assumption built into your theory?