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TennisOne Lessons 
Acquiring the Essentials of the Serve Feisal Hassan, USPTA Master Professional In previous articles on the essentials of shot making, I broke the essentials of any tennis stroke into four stages: Stage 1: SEE the ball In this article, I’d like to look at these four stages as they would pertain to the serve and how to acquire these skills. STAGE 1: See the ball on the serve In serving, the visual spoiler is that players typically watch where they want to hit the serve just before making contact with the ball. HEAD POSITIONINGWhen serving, the serve should remain relatively still at all times. The more your head is over your center of gravity, the more efficient your visual tracking, balance, strokes, and recovery will be. To help maintain your head positioning, focus on keeping the tossing hand up longer during the service motion. This will help keep the head up during the serve. HAND-EYE COORDINATION DRILLS FOR THE SERVEThe following are examples of drills that could be used to train the hand-eye coordination required for the serve
STAGE 2: Footwork to get into position to hit the serve In order to look at the footwork in the serve, let’s break down the serve into 4 phases:
Preparation phase In the preparation phase of the serve, the front toes point at an angle to the baseline, this enables the hips and shoulders to rotate. The toe position is a true fundamental. All great servers start with their toes pointed in this manner. Preferences: This is a function of style and varies with players. Some players (like Sampras) turn the toe more as they begin the loading phase, which helps ensure adequate rotation. Some players also lift their front toe transferring weight to their back foot (like Roddick and Serena). This action helps establish relaxation and balance. Some players (like Roddick) use a “rocking” action to transfer their weight back and forth. This transfer of weight from front to back and then forward again into impact is a fundamental Loading and Hitting phases There are two movement/footwork techniques during the loading and hitting phases of the serve, Platform movement and Thrust movement.
It is my belief that this movement is good for strong, coordinated athletes, and a great way to use the legs to generate pace and topspin There are two types of thrust movements: The pin-point thrust and the platform thrust. The difference between the two is basically stylistic and based on individual preferences. The Pin-point or the “foot-up” technique: The Pin-point stance brings the back foot closer to the front foot at the release of the ball toss. This concept of sliding the feet together can establish balance and rhythm in the delivery while the player is loading up his body weight before exploding upward. The server then lands on the court with the front foot, the back foot “kicks back and up. This helps with dynamic balance and recovery of the next shot (Roddick). Platform thrust or the “foot-back” technique: The Platform stance involves maintaining a “wide” stance throughout the serve, then exploding upward on the front foot (Agassi) It is my belief that the pin-point “foot up” technique ( Roddick and Serena) produces greater vertical force, which leads to a better up and out hitting trajectory compared to the platform thrust “foot back/down” style. Greater horizontal force is produced by the foot-back style, which may enable better movement forward, toward the net STAGE 3: Dynamic balance The concept of keeping the body and racquet under control while serving is referred to as dynamic balance
Head position (This was already covered in STAGE 1: SEE the ball on the serve) Upper body positioningThe non-dominant hand plays an important role in balance during stroke production. Just as a tightrope walker uses his hand to maintain balance, so does a tennis player. The non-dominant hand helps to facilitate upper body rotation and enhances a good center of balance by countering the racquet arm. Serve and the non dominant hand: In the initial tossing position, the ball is placed on the finger tips (not the palm) for control of the toss. There are three tossing motions:
Open door: The tossing arm is brought straight down and nearly parallel to the front thigh, then straight up with the tossing arm. This motion resembles that of a door opening where the tossing arm is the door and the hitting shoulder is the door hinge. Fish hook: The tossing arm is brought down and back all the way to the middle of the body (belly button), then up. This motion resembles a fish hook or “J” motion. Rear leg: The tossing arm is brought down and back all the way to the rear leg before beginning the upward motion (like the pros) Any of these three tossing motions are fine provided the player can accommodate, however, there are several factors to consider:
The Open door motion is simplest leading to the to rear leg motion which is more difficult. As for the accuracy of the toss, all three actions are fine depending on the quality of practice the player
has had in developing the motion. The Open door motion has the least amount of body rotation and the rear leg motion the most rotation. Which motion should a player choose? It is up to the player as long as the motion chosen assists the player with an accurate toss, consistency, and trunk rotation. When the ball is released, keep the tossing arm up and look over the arm to see the opponent’s court. Follow-through and the non dominant hand: There are two types of finishes. One finish is following through on the non-hitting side and the other finish is on the hitting side involving which involves“tucking in” the non-dominant hand by the hitting-side hip. Research has found that a player gets 1.7 times more racquet head speed when following through than on the hitting side than on the non-hitting. Leg positioning and balance The footwork/movement techniques were already discussed in STAGE 2: Footwork to get into position to hit the serve. With the platform movement, balance can easily be maintained and obviously, balance skills getting more challenging heading toward the thrust movement. However, more leg force is generated with the thrust movement compared to the platform movement. STAGE 4: Swing/control the racquet head during the serve This stage is to develop faster racquet acceleration and more control of the fast racquet head during the serve.
The goal of relaxation and swing development exercises is to teach players to swing effectively using as little Breathing Drill: Players need to make sure they exhale on forward swing. Holding one’s breath causes the muscle to tense up. Three finger swing Drill: Have the player relax the pinky and ring finger and serves with the other “three fingers. ”This gives the player the sensation of relaxing the body. The goal of pure acceleration exercises is to train the neuromuscular system in order to improve racquet acceleration. These drills are designed to strengthen the muscles and to improve general neuromuscular coordination to achieve higher racquet head speeds. Control is not important at all in these drills. In fact, these drills will probably be more effective when executed off-court, so that players can focus on acceleration without worrying about control. There are two types of pure acceleration drills: Contrast drills and Racquet-head drills Contrast drills: These drills alternately overstimulate then immediately understimulate a player’s muscles ( or vice-versa) to force a faster than normal responses. This effect is achieved by alternating the use of heavier and lighter objects. Examples:
Racquet head drills: Drills in which players practice swinging as fast as possible, control is of no importance. Examples:
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Feisal Hassan, a USPTA Master Professional and PTR certified professional, is a member of the Head/Penn Racquet Sports National Advisory Board and National Speaker's Bureau, the Director of Certification & Testing for the USPTA Middle States division and a USA High Performance Coach.