Federer Serve/Second serve

[pmata814]

First of all thank you so much for a great article(federer serve). I can't believe the difference it made in my serve after just one hopper of practice! My question is:

I'm using the motion in your article, obviously, as my first serve. How should I change it to hit a second serve? (I hit a kick serve as my second) Should I just place the toss more to the left and behind my head and everything else remains the same? Or is there more to it?

I'm sorry if this has been asked before, I ran a search and couldn't find anything. I'm brand new to the site so I'm still trying to find my way around. I didn't even know we had this forum

Thanks in advance.

[johnyandell]

Glad the articles were so helpful-that's what we always hope to hear...

As for the second serve, I would say basically the difference is the toss. You might check out the Sampras serve articles in Tour Strokes and read the one on the second serve. More extreme than Roger but the principle is the same.

Definitely you want to move the toss to the left, but NOT behind you. A little further in compared to the first serve only. From a side view the first serve contact is right at the front edge of the face. Second serve at most a few inches further back.

With the left ball position you feel you are able to really hit up big time for spin.

[pmata814]

Glad the articles were so helpful-that's what we always hope to hear...

As for the second serve, I would say basically the difference is the toss. You might check out the Sampras serve articles in Tour Strokes and read the one on the second serve. More extreme than Roger but the principle is the same.

Definitely you want to move the toss to the left, but NOT behind you. A little further in compared to the first serve only. From a side view the first serve contact is right at the front edge of the face. Second serve at most a few inches further back.

With the left ball position you feel you are able to really hit up big time for spin.

Thanks for the quick reply...would the toss still start off from the same place (right side) and just drift further left or do I just toss the ball on my left hand side (I mean the toss would start and end on the left hand side...this is what I usually do )?

[johnyandell]

You want the tossing motions to be as identical as possible. The idea is on the release to arc the ball so that it travels further to the left to the contact point.

Take a Federer 2nd serve and model the contact point yourself. Now with your racket in position, take the tossing arm out to the left and practice (and visualize) the arc that will cross exactly through that point!