To Pete's credit--

[airforce1]

Glad to see Pete still getting that credit he deserves as the best at the second serve!

Having a second serve that is like money in the bank, really gives you options on the First serve. It really makes the first serve look much better than it is. I love the point about how little difference there is in the motion, which proves what I teach about how the 1st serve should grow out of the solid second serve. The first serve should be just a slight amount more aggressive in 1-4 ways and by reducing the ways you can make it closer to the great second serve, therefore raising the 1st serve % greatly when you need to! When you feel really confident and want a max 1st serve, then just add some to all 4 ways.

Interesting after all the comments Pete made about his toss being the same for all his serves, that John's research shows this to be not exactly true. It must have been similar, cause everyone agreed how hard it was to read, but John shows there are some subtle differences. I always suspected this and never bought into the "one toss theory" completely, but figured it was good to keep the differences minor and masked.

[johnyandell]

I think the clarification is that Pete was trained to hit all his first serves off one toss--and all his second serves off another. We'll be exploring that in the Forum in upcoming months.

[llll]

pete's second serve

airforce 1 can you list the 4 differences between 2nd and 1st serve .thanks

[airforce1]

This list can be added to I'm sure, I should have said "about" 4 things.

I'm sure there will be very few surprises in the list, as we do most of these, consciously or not. What may be different for some is the idea of mixing and matching the components to your strengths and/or situation.

Here are the 4 referred to:

1) Keeping very good racket head speed, but converting that speed to more brush than pop, which gives more spin, increasing our margin for error.

2) Using targets with more margin for error, like body serves or one you are confident you will hit.

3) Keeping very good racket drop, but starting with the elbow extension slightly earlier in the upward motion gives more time to line up for finer control of placement

4) Increasing the aspect of topspin to your spin component

Often players will use all 4 of these on their second serve, and that is a good place to start, but breaking them out like this, gives more options. From this you can see that you don't have to use every one on all second serves.

[airforce1]

John,
I think you've shown that he did in fact have some differences, but I can recall over and over hearing him and his coaches discuss how he trained to hit "all" of his serves <including the kick> from the same toss, so that you never knew what to expect. Never have I heard them say he hit all his "first" serves from one toss. I always took their claim on this to be a little odd and knew that it could use some deeper explaining, so I'm pretty excited that you will be bringing it.