Teaching the serve

[mntlblok]

I hope this is not an inappropriate question for this forum, but I'm wondering if there is some sort of "secondary" serving technique that should be taught to players who don't have what it takes to go through the gyrations involved in the pronation move in the serve.

I often watch tennis pros trying to teach the serve to lower level players and I seldom see many positive results. It strikes me that most of the players (generally women) just don't have what it takes to utilize top/slice spin on their serves - at least in the manner apparent from the high speed videos.

I may be way off the mark here, and I certainly don't mean to disparage women. I sometimes get to hit with some local college women who can serve me off the court, but, for example, my 93 lb. wife just seems to have no hope of ever manipulating the racket in the manner seen in the high speed videos.

What's the answer? Perfecting a pinpoint accurate underspin serve? If you're under five feet tall and can't utilize any topspin, the size of the window to hit over the net seems *very* small, especially if she tries to put any mustard on it.

Kevin B
Savannah

[johnyandell]

Pronation is an effect not a cause. Teaching it is misguided. What should be taught is stance, wind up, racket drop, ball toss position, arm motion to contact, racket position at contact, followthrough. Leave the pronation to god.

[mntlblok]

Pronation is an effect not a cause. Teaching it is misguided. What should be taught is stance, wind up, racket drop, ball toss position, arm motion to contact, racket position at contact, followthrough. Leave the pronation to god.

I understand. But, is it your opinion that most everyone can be taught the same types of serve or service motion? I'm just wondering if a good racket drop and then up to proper racket position at contact, without enough racket head speed, yields a useable product (a big enough margin for error), or whether it makes sense, instead, to teach a flat or underspin serve to a certain segment of the tennis playing population.

I ain't arguing. I'm just asking.

Kevin B

[johnyandell]

No I'll stick by the above.

[mntlblok]

No I'll stick by the above.

Thanks to that, we're starting to make some progress with my wife's serve. This really points up the similarities with throwing a ball - which she also couldn't do.

Kevin

[jhm36]

I've got a rally partner just learning to serve and we've had the best luck getting her to hit a topspin slice. You know, ball a little to the right, hitting around the 2 o'clock position on the ball, swing path kind of towards the net post, racquet drop away from the body (she has a dreadful habit of dropping the racquet right onto her back and I mean *flat* onto her back, strange) and to really accelerate up to the ball instead of staying at the same speed she used in her wind-up. Also to keep her head up, left shoulder up for longer than she thinks, reach up to the ball. Loose arm. Being careful not to switch back to her forehand grip while swinging. Etc, etc. The list goes on and on. It's a lot to think about. No wonder it takes so long to learn how to serve. Trying to get all that working together is quite a task.

She doesn't have much power at all, but she can get the ball in without looking like she's patty-caking it, and she's thrilled with that. She's not looking for a weapon at all, just a serve that will get the ball in the box during our very friendly, very low key days on the court.

When we're just rallying I've taken to hitting her lots of lobs so she can get even more practice with a swing-like motion by having to hit overheads.

Keep us posted on how it's going, Kevin. I'm interested in hearing more.

[jhm36]

related question

Something for John.

So what type of serve would you recommend teaching someone who is just learning? Topspin slice? Slice? Twist. Topspin? Kick? Flat. Etc. Or would you recommend right from the start someone start learning a few different serves at the same time? What type of serve do you think is the easiest to learn? is there a order of serves that you teach, moving from easiest to hardest? Or is this sort of thing all individual relative and you teach people to serve the ones that seem to come the most natural to them and then move on from there?

Thanks,

[johnyandell]

I think the spin initially takes care of itself. I don't worry about which variation. I teach the fundamentals of the motion and the tossing motion and then see where the player tosses and what happens.

Some will hit more slice. Some will hit a little more top. That's the basis for starting to hit all the variations.

[jhm36]

Thanks, John. Makes sense to me, trying to take the best of what the student is naturally offering you and working with that. I know that as I was learning to serve on my own I made the mistake to trying to pick up the kick-serve first, wanting to put more topspin to get the ball in at a higher percentage, but it turns out that was the wrong thing to start with, too much of an 'unnatural' motion for me. When I gave up on that and switched to trying to learn the topspin slice I picked that up much more easily. From that I was better able to gain control of service direction and spins. Still double-faulting too much, though.

I'm now able to set up some cheap points with a hard topspin slice that goes to the body which can get me a short floater up the middle that I can do just about anything I want to with. Mix that up with some slices out wide and then a little kicker up the middle for an ace and my service game has much improved in the last couple of months.

Don't get me wong, my kick serve up the middle isn't that fast, and the people I play against aren't the quickest in the world, but there's a lot of satisfication to be gained out of hitting those up-the-middle slow aces knowing that it wasn't the speed of the thing that won the point but the set-up of the slice serves that made them guess body serve or out-wide and then the surprise of the one up the middle. Not to be missed.

[johnyandell]

Sounds like a developed weapon.

[jhm36]

Thanks, John. Getting that way, slowly. I remember the first few times I aced people with that kicker up the middle I put the responsibility all on the other person being out of position. Weird but true. Me, ace someone? How can that be? Now that I've been able to do it to a number of people I now take some of the responsibility. Nice step in my tennis progress.

[acik24]

Eastern forehand grip serve

John,

I enjoyed reading your article on Federer's serve. It certainly destroys all the myths taught by coaches I have ever spoken to or had lessons from.

Some kids I teach will have the ability to pick up most of the points in your article. Others struggle and quickly get disillusioned. For them they have greater success with a mild forheand grip. I understand that this was the grip that Becker used.

Can you confirm if this is true or false and if true could I have your comments on his serve.

Many thanks

Louis Gunn

[johnyandell]

Louis,


It would be great if every kid had the ability to pick up the racket and serve with a continental. My experience is like yours that they do not.

I like to have them hit from a full drop position because the danger with the forehand grip is that they will never get the racket fully on edge. It's particularly true with girls, even up through high school. If they can't get the motion, though they can't.

Better they have SOME serve than none. I keep trying though and at the slightest indication they really can do it, I keep on them. If they can do it once they will with practice get it--if you don't allow them to default back.

Again working from the drop with a mild continental can be the difference in getting them over the hump.

[lukman41985]

Louis,

FYI: My pro told me that Becker did serve with an Eastern forehand grip, but it was more of an old-style Eastern forehand (the V on top) grip than a modern Eastern forehand grip.

[gzhpcu]

Apparently Mike Sangster, who had one of the fastest all-time serves, used a Eastern forehand grip as well.