Where to Stand When Serving a Spin

[lisaburton]

I am LH.. I have a sharp, low spin serve out wide to the ad court.
A RH returner can rarely if ever hit this serve down the line.

My question is where should I stand to get the most spin... Close to the center line or towards the alley. I find if I stand out wide when I serve that the spin is not as fast. Also, if I want to keep them honest and serve down the middle from the wide position I find it rather difficult.

any opinions

 

[zapvor]

i am rh, but i stand pretty much the same place for every serve. like you mentioned,just experiment and see what works best.

 

[JRstriker12]

Where you stand has no effect on how much spin your serve has; however, it can affect your placement.

I vary where I stand every once in a while just to throw my opponent off balance.

I would stand wide if you want to serve out wide and push your opponent off the court with a slice serve. As you said, you probably won't serve with as much pace from this postion, but if you're a lefty, your spin should make this serve pretty hard to return.

But, if you want to keep going down the middle an option and surprise your opponent, I'd stand closer to the center hash mark when you serve.

 

[LuckyR]

I assume you are asking about singles, not doubles. Personally I would always serve about 3-5 feet from the hash mark. From there you can: hit either corner, your T serves will be potential aces, you can still drag folks off of the court w/ slice and you are relatively well centered for returns of returns. You'll never give your serve away by your positioning so those T serves are likely to be more devastating.

 

[ivan987]

Maybe the best thing would be to learn to serve all kinds of serves without changing stances. Then it would be much harder for your opponent to anticipate your serve. You can always modify your body movement while the ball is still in the air, for more spin just make more torso rotation and use your back. Don't rely too much on your back because you can hurt them.

 

[Cindysphinx]

I'm in the "Pick a location and go with it" crowd.

I also find that setting up the same way is important for signaled poaches. I take my usual position, check my partner's hand signal and serve in the manner desired to run the play. If I had to change position to hit different serves, this would kill the effectiveness of signaled poaches.