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Tennis Lessons

Hitting a Harder Serve

By Mike Whittington, TennisONE Contributing Editor

Question

How do I get more power on my serve?

Answer

There is certainly nothing wrong with adding a little pep to your serve or any stroke for that matter. However, before you spend your time working to increase the power of your serve, you must ask yourself how well you've mastered spin and placement of the serve, and how consistent your serves are. I personally feel that placement, spin, and consistency are far more important than power on most serves. I see a lot of people put the cart before the horse on this issue. Remember, a 120 mph double fault is still a double fault.

But let's assume the ideal situation: you already have good control of your serve and can place it to your opponent's weakness. Also,let's assume you are getting in a high percentage of first serves and are able to impart some spin on the ball.

You can find some complete lessons on improving your serve in the TennisONE library (topspin serve, slice serve, hitting up on serve), but here are a few tips for juicing up your serve. As demonstrated in the photo to the left, start by getting the toss in front so that the body falls into the court naturally, putting more of you into the serve. You do have to remember to hit up on the ball even though you are moving forward. You can also practice your flat serve. That will put more of the strings behind the ball, certainly adding more power. Finally, you can increase your racquet head speed by simply swinging faster. This might seem obvious but can be a little more difficult to master because of the difference in the time between toss and contact.

And one final thought for adding power on the serve. Make sure you re confident about your changes before putting them into match play. As with any shot, you don't want to try to use it in match play before you've achieved some mastery over it in practice.

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