Waiter's Tray vs High Level Serving Technique- What's Out There?

Wow. Sorry man. I fixed mine in two weeks but I am glad you fixed your waiter's tray.
If you're coordinated a serve can be fixed quickly with the right coaching.


LakeSnake said:
I think the Waiter's thing is gone, but I still double fault more than people who patty-cake 2nd serves and have not truthfully gotten a flat serve down yet. And I have put in quite a few sessions, 25+; and had barely played any sets before transitioning. It is no joke to change.

BTW, you can definitely have a waiter's tray serve with a continental grip; I did!
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LakeSnake said:
I think the Waiter's thing is gone, but I still double fault more than people who patty-cake 2nd serves and have not truthfully gotten a flat serve down yet. And I have put in quite a few sessions, 25+; and had barely played any sets before transitioning. It is no joke to change.

BTW, you can definitely have a waiter's tray serve with a continental grip; I did!
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How did u fix it? And I agree you can do the WT with a conti grip...I do.
 
heninfan99 said:
What would like to fix about it?
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Uhmmm....everything :)

I would like more racquet drop and more leading with the edge into contact.
It's so tough to keep that right palm from opening up and also I believe my
lack of flexibility hinders my racquet drop.
 
henin, 2 weeks only ??

I am working on correcting a 25 year problem of avoiding the racket drop on serve. If I solve that then its on to tackle the waiters problem.

Did you serve everyday during those 2 weeks. Were you just shanking balls at first. It is kind odd.
I can only work on one major thing at a time.
Worthless past pros seemed to have poorly understood the damn back scratch position and I am too stupid to realize this 20 years ago.
 
Amazing how few pros can correctly teach the serve.

All my past pros were good at groundies, slice and volleys but terrible at serve.
 
IT was not until last year!! That I finally had ad real trophy position. Still my served sucked and I was getting broken to inferior players.
Now I see it is the back scratch then pronation.
 
I served with a waiters tray with a forehand grip.
My coach said bounce the ball on your racquet with the conti grip while watching tv, every commercial break and free moment. I hated the grip but ended up loving the grip in 2 weeks.

He also showed me pronation drills to do at the same time.
There are a lot of tricks to short cut everything on a good basic serve.
I can see two drills that would help JackB if he can approach with an open mind.
No, I didnt serve much, I mostly just did the bouncing and the pronation drills.
Sampras can do all 6 or 7 parts of the serve at once as a kid & have it be great.
Most of us have to break it down into chunks if you are struggling.

The thing is I am very coachable. When my coach told me to do those things I didn't question, I just did them cause I trusted him.
You also can't have too many cooks in the kitchen. Pick one guy Salzy, Macci, Coach Mauro or LeeD or whoever and stick with them. If you are more abstract then use System Anomaly, who I respect but my style is the opposite. I like to simplify and cut through the noise.

One drill I would recommend for JackB is the continuous motion this child does. He should do the first part over & over & over as loose as possible because hes a bit stiff. But that's just one. Surely he can imitate a child somewhat. Racquet drop is a side effect of this.

dgold44 said:
henin, 2 weeks only ??

I am working on correcting a 25 year problem of avoiding the racket drop on serve. If I solve that then its on to tackle the waiters problem.

Did you serve everyday during those 2 weeks. Were you just shanking balls at first. It is kind odd.



Worthless past pros seemed to have poorly understood the damn back scratch position and I am too stupid to realize this 20 years ago.
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henin, 2 weeks to radically change your grip too and serve better.
You must be a natural and super coordinated guy.
 
Waiter's tray is not all that bad.
I found, while working on an old service stance, that I could do a sidearm takeback, waiter tray motion, and still hit flat serves that bounced around mid thigh heights after the ball went IN. Talking 60 degree weather, foggy. The short motion actually was easier to control, and keeping the elbow slightly out to the side gave me more consistency than taking it directly opposite the toss arm. It did stress the inside forearm tendons near the elbow.
I also find a slight grip switch from pure conti in the direction of eastern forehand can flatten out a serve with ease.
Then again, a pistol grip ala McEnroe gives great consistency for first flat serves, but not much power. A loss in power is sometimes worth the attempt if consistency goes up.
However, I do now use an old style stance, dead sideways to the target, conti with slight eBAckhand orientation, hammer grip, and racket elbow back.
 
Eh...I can juggle which seemed harder to learn, can you try that drill that kid does in the vid without a ball, just the racquet? And stay loose?

dgold44 said:
henin, 2 weeks to radically change your grip too and serve better.
You must be a natural and super coordinated guy.
Click to expand...
 
Might be easy for some - but statistically we can say few make the change..for me my hitch is a bigger problem then WT - although I can see a bit of both in video.. But LakeSnake but a lot of work in...to fix his.. And the other issue is that even if you fix it you might not have a great serve.. There is just a lot that can go wrong on the serve..

The major problem for a lot of adults is actually competitive play. You are going to want to use your 'good' serve in a match so all bad habits come back..
 
Guy, that is true and that is why it is best to avoid playing competitive tennis for many months or until the problem is fixed.

Some people are so results orientated that they will never change and thus never improve.
 
Too much focus on technique.
One of my buds plays either 1 or 2 for a league 4.5 team, so he plays OK. He has a volleyball serve, waiter's tray. Still, it goes in around high teens, and is very accurate. Worse, he's only been playing for 4 years total.
 
Lee, I agree being too crazy about every detail will usually end in utter failure.

Does your friend even bring the racket behind his back or head or does he just spike it . That was my old serve that I stopped doing last month.
 
henin, ok I thought that kid was you lol.
That kid is going to have a massive serve one day. He has a great coach too.
 
He spikes it.
However, he's 6'2" and maybe 185 lbs., 33 years old, goes to fitness gyms, can run all day (did SF Bay to Breakers under an hour without practice).
 
Lee, if your friend did the back scratch he would easily add on 20 mph , I bet.

Then again I am 6-1 and a skinny 160 and 40 yrs old.
 
heninfan99 said:
One drill I would recommend for JackB is the continuous motion this child does. He should do the first part over & over & over as loose as possible because hes a bit stiff. But that's just one. Surely he can imitate a child somewhat. Racquet drop is a side effect of this.
Click to expand...

I have done this drill many times before. When I was working with Tomaz he had me doing this. I would dry swing 3 times and then toss a ball.
It helped a little but not much. I'll try working on it again and post another video. The kid in the video already has a nice drop in his dry
swings and has zero stiffness or shoulder mobility issues that a 50 year old like me does. He also doesn't have years of engrained bad habits to undo.
 
Noah is a USTA 5.0 level player. NONE of you are.
He's been playing tennis a total of 4 years. Most of you were still 3.5's after longer than that. Or, you're 3.5 now, and haven't played for 4 years.
Kinda like giving Ton Lar's serving tips.
 
Forget the ball for now. Just do the first part like hundreds of times.
Im in my mid 40s so, just be extremely loose, don't worry about the racquet drop, it happens naturally by being loose, barely hold on to the racquet.

JackB1 said:
I have done this drill many times before. When I was working with Tomaz he had me doing this. I would dry swing 3 times and then toss a ball.
It helped a little but not much. I'll try working on it again and post another video. The kid in the video already has a nice drop in his dry
swings and has zero stiffness or shoulder mobility issues that a 50 year old like me does. He also doesn't have years of engrained bad habits to undo.
Click to expand...
 
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Listen to Heninfan99.
Do not focus on the racket drop, you can loosen your grip of the pinkie and ring fingers.
The loop swing provides the racket drop, all you need. LOOP swing, not linear swing.
 
heninfan99 said:
Forget the ball for now. Just do the first part like hundreds of times.
Im in my mid 40s so, just be extremely loose, don't worry about the racquet drop, it happens naturally by being loose, barely hold on to the racquet.
Click to expand...

I can do dry swings with a good drop all day. Doesn't get me anywhere.
 
LOOP swing provides the moving racket head drop.
A LINEAR swing from trophy, takeback straight back and down, provides little racket head drop, because YOU are dropping the racket, not allowing MOMENTUM to loop the rackethead down your back.
 
LeeD said:
LOOP swing provides the moving racket head drop.
A LINEAR swing from trophy, takeback straight back and down, provides little racket head drop, because YOU are dropping the racket, not allowing MOMENTUM to loop the rackethead down your back.
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I tried the looping takeback and it didn't help my drop. With the abbreviated serve, my elbow gets into a better position.
 
You haven't posted a vid in a while.
I posted I sometimes migrate to a waiter's tray flat first serve, and it seems to be no loss of ball speed, still bouncing mid thigh high in the backwall. POSSIBLY, it makes less difference than we make it out to be.
A friend, Noah, a USTA 5.0, uses a volleyball waiter's tray motion and he serves into the high teens, maybe a bit more. Serves are not his forte', as he likes to play long points, run everything down, and frustrate opponent's.
 
JackB1 said:
I have tried almost everything and it's far from easy to fix. Here are a couple of serves I
just during my lunch break. Still looks pretty bad :(
Click to expand...

On a positive note, you fixed the straight arm thing at trophy.

The negative is that your pattern is still to not let the racket drop and just pull it into the ball. You have a very strongly wired pattern and as soon as you have to intercept a ball, the no-drop program fires and that's how you hit it. I don't know how to break that pattern. Perhaps you could have someone stun you with a taser every time you do a swing with the ball and don't let the racket drop.;)
 
JackB1 said:
This waiters tray serve issue sure is a tricky one and one that I have been fighting for a while now. Very difficult to fix for an adult like myself who started playing
late in life. I would also say that 90% of the women I see playing rec tennis have a WT serve. The main culprit of this IMO is opening up the palm too early.
Also the WT serve does hand in hand with a shallow racquet drop, since the very instant you open up the palm, the racquet cannot drop anymore after that.
The other problem with fixing this, is that many rec players develop a fairly effective serve at the rec level even with all these issues, so there's no real incentive to fix it.
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Chas Tennis said:
Jack, I looked at a video of your serve from Dec 2014.

Compare your forearm-to-racket angle to the high level serve clips in the OP.
.........................................................................................
One of my goals is to have everybody interested in doing some video analysis of stroke characteristics.
......................................................
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1) From the 2nd thread above -

Were you able to compare your forearm-to-racket angles to those of some high level serves?

I had looked at your Dec 2014 video above and could not find a forearm-to-racket angle showing when accelerating to the ball. That angle is necessary to develop racket head speed from ISR or pronation. But your camera angle is not one that I am familiar with, maybe the camera is viewing at about 45° to the ball's trajectory, so I can't compare forearm-racket angles very well.

Do you have the concept of 'rotating the racket face last second before impact'? That can be very misleading.

2) You had a very long thread a couple of years ago about your serve. I can't find it. Did I make some comments then, any pictures?

3) A Waiter's Tray serve has the racket face on to the ball at the Big L position as posted many times. That's how you screen for WT in videos, pictures or by eye. Here is the comparison.
http://www.hi-techtennis.com/serve/big_l_student.php

Compare frames of your Dec 2014 video around the Big L position regarding whether face-on or edge on.

Do you have a WT issue? How are you identifying it?

4) Everybody is right about the amount of cocking. You are getting hardly any external shoulder rotation (ESR) to pre-stretch your internal shoulder rotation muscles (ISR). Did you look at the Tennisplayer.net article that was the subject of the the earlier thread? http://www.tennisplayer.net/public/biomechanics/chas_stumpfel/internal_shoulder_rotation/index.html
 
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seems you might psyc yourself out a little at the line.
if you can do that continuous motion away from the line then you are very close to a smooth racquet drop in practice

your swing path is a littlie bit side arm in practice. go over the top like the kid in your shadow continuous swings away from the court.


JackB1 said:
I can do dry swings with a good drop all day. Doesn't get me anywhere.
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can I see a vid of your continuous motion? cant get you fixed in 2 weeks without being in person but u still can improve quickly but an open mind is needed and a dash of belief.

Even abbreviated serves are loose and have a smooth racquet drop,
the continuous motion is just to help your arm feel as loose as a wet noodle. Think wet noodle. :)

This is the first chunk to work on


JackB1 said:
I tried the looping takeback and it didn't help my drop. With the abbreviated serve, my elbow gets into a better position.
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dsp9753 said:
Can anyone tell me if I have an ISR or waiters tray serve? I am having a hard time figuring/understanding from the pictures. Here is a sample of some if my serves...
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232323232%7Ffp83232%3Euqcshlukaxroqdfv3%3C968%3Enu%3D92%3B5%3E359%3E257%3EWSNRCG%3D383%3A733946348nu0mrj


Altho' you were asking about ISR and WTE, I couldn't help noticing something else unusual about your serve motion. You get an impressive about of "air" from your leg drive. However, the position (orientation) of your body in the images above is rather odd. It appears the you've opened up too much (too early) prior to contact -- especially your hips.

When you land after contact, your right leg kicks way off to the right (your legs form an inverted L on your landing). Instead, try landing with your left foot pointing toward the target area and your right leg kicking back. Hopefully, doing so will prevent you from opening up your hips too much (over-rotating) prior to contact. This, in turn, should yield a better transfer to your upper body, shoulder and arm.
 
heninfan99 said:
can I see a vid of your continuous motion? cant get you fixed in 2 weeks without being in person but u still can improve quickly but an open mind is needed and a dash of belief.

Even abbreviated serves are loose and have a smooth racquet drop,
the continuous motion is just to help your arm feel as loose as a wet noodle. Think wet noodle. :)

This is the first chunk to work on
Click to expand...

Yes, I will do that soon for you. Thanks for offering to help.
 
By pronating at the exact right time: rather that doing it too early. How much extra speed are we talking here ??
5-7 mph is only my guess. I dont know.
 
When you get that perfect "snap" feel, effortless real power, it seems to propel the ball and extra 15 mph to me over normal pronation. I get it about 30% of the time, because mishits take away that much alone. I think, high center on the sweetspot.
 
Ok Lee, I am going to add pronation and going "edge up" into my serve next month. Right now I open way too early. Still working on that other thing. Your analogy to a forehand loop is great.
Also, I am going to start posting some videos in several weeks.
Do you recommend any cameras or camcorders that work well for slow motion technique. Also must have wide lens if I ever tape a match.
Finally I assume I need to buy a tripod to stand the camera to view my strokes. Any ideas.
I have too many projects at work now and will not post any videos until Octoberish or later.
 
LeeD said:
Both Seppi and Big Soft Hands have big serves because they are 6'3" serve bots.
But if they were 5'10" in height, they'd need some adjustment of technique to approach even 110.
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seppi does not serve with WT motion. it's a classic motion.
 
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here is a tip. been working on mine. keep the serve arm down with palm down as you enter tossing arm extended. the problem with WT is we don't delay bringing serving arm up. you can see this when you break down slow mo video. take a look at the Karlovic video that floats around here and notice where his right arm is when he extends with tossing arm...if you keep your palm down long enough it's impossible to do a WT. also some pros actually look like tip of raquet head is pointed straight down when tossing arm extended. that's what I mean by "delay"....

think of it this way. toss the ball up...wait...and hit... don't try to get into trophy. instead toss, delay and then swing or "throw"... don't worry about getting the ball in. focus on trying to "feel" the loop motion.
 
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thats great. The racquet drop is sweet. Can your more vertical, straight up.
Youre going a bit like / I need you to go I

And faster & looser. You should hear a swoosh as you naturally pronate.
I can't see if you pronating on the finish.

you mentioned tomaz/feel tennis. Did you know any of his pronation drills?
"smacking in the ground" is a good one 13:37 in



JackB1 said:
Here u go
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JackB1 has worked with Tomaz from feel tennis if I remember right... Henin99 some guys are just hard to fix. Those bad habits get in so bad - they can't get it out. JackB1 serve is actually pretty good for his level despite this..

People really really want to hit the ball - so they just open up the racquet face early to make sure they don't miss or they refuse to let it drop so the racquet doesn't feel far from the ball.. It can be a real hard problem to fix..

Like I said earlier in the thread - if you just watch league tennis or wander your local club there are lots of players who do not serve correctly. On the women's side only at 4.5 do most women start serving correctly. Sure you can see some women serving correctly at lower level..but that exception..

On the men's side you see a few isolate cases of guys serving correctly at low level.. But the problem is almost worse there. Because men are so much bigger and stronger lower level players can ACE guys with incorrect serves.. Find some 3.5 who aced some dude with his frying pan serve tell him he needs to change everything.. Aint gonna happen..

Your best candidates are people who kinda suck. They can quit playing - and focus entirely on getting it right. but most male older players play competitively..and so they don't have that option..
 
Agreed but he's close. I actually won 3.5 league 9 years ago with a waiters serve but he seems to really want to "fix" his serve but he serves fine now.

JackB feel free to PM me, though it is hard to fix via the internets I'm happy to help if I can.
 
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