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Improving Your Serve - Part Two

 

Andy Roddick at the SAP Open in 2005. SERVICE.

Image via Wikipedia

The two most important shots in your repertoire are your groundstrokes and serves. It is easy to see why groundstrokes are important; you hit them almost every point of the match. We grind our groundstrokes day after day in practice. However, many of us players neglect our serve. It is a disappointment because we start off 50% of all points with our serve. A player with a good serve starts half the points with an advantage. A play with a bad serve starts of half the points with a disadvantage. Plus, the serve is entirely in our control. It is impossible to predict exactly where your opponent is going to hit the ball, but on serve you can toss the ball up wherever you want.

Any player with common sense should look to gain this advantage. If you are double-faulting, pushing your serve, or just looking to develop an already good serve; here are some tips to help you improve.

1) Focus on WHERE you want to hit the ball

Before you start your service motion, divide the service box into 3 equal parts. If you have better aim, you can divide it up even more. If you are double-faulting, thinking about where you want to hit the ball will help you regain focus and help take some pressure off yourself.

Make sure you are lined up to hit the ball where you want it to go.  If you are aiming to the right, finish your service motion to the right. If you are playing a righty, you will mostly want to aim to your right, because usually players’ backhands are weaker than their forehands. When you make contact make sure you are hitting the correct side of the ball. If you are aiming to the right, you will want to hit the ball at 11 o’clock.

It is also important to make sure your opponent can’t “read” where you are trying to hit the ball. Therefore, you must disguise your serve. One way to practice this is the a-b-c drill (alley - body - center) When practicing, divide the service box into three parts. Have a friend call out a (towards the alley), b (towards the body of your opponent), or c (towards the center line - service "T") right after you toss the ball. Serve to where your friend told you to. If you do this drill enough it will help you aim better and help you disguise your serve.

2) Put your entire body into the shot

As you add more of your body into your shots, your service motion will become more complex. Therefore, it is important to sometimes practice your serve without a ball. This is sometimes called “shadowing”.

Make sure to lean your hip beyond the service line. Bend your knees. Make sure your shoulders and body are perpendicular to the net. Finally, when the toss has reached its peak, unleash all that energy you have stored into your body. Jump into the court as you hit the ball and prepare for the next shot with a split-step.

3) Practice serving by throwing

A pitch in baseball is much like a serve in tennis. If you ever get the chance to play tennis with a serious baseball player, you should notice that their serve is very hard. It may not be accurate, but the serve should have a lot of pace on it. You can throw a ball with a friend, or you can just get some tennis balls and see how far you can throw them from the baseline. Then, immediately try doing the same motion with a tennis racquet. You should see some results.

4) Add variety

The best way to throw your opponent off on serve is to add different spins and paces to your serve. Try to serve kick, slice and flat serves into your service games. At 40-love and first serve, throw in a hard, flat serve for an ace. Occasionally serve a ball with absolutely no pace on it. This is effective when your opponent has been getting hard serve after hard serve.

Enjoy these tips!

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