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My recent post on the Sampras serve tossing motion got lots of feedback. I appreciate all of you taking your time to write back. Always gets me thinking about how to best get my points across and to help you better understand how to get better with your game…
And the one thing I want to always make sure you’re considering is that pure swing mechanics can be practiced and improved upon, but in the end, perfecting those mechanics doesn’t always mean you’ll win each and every point when you serve.
Of course you want to insure that there aren’t any major flaws in your serving mechanics, but trying to get them absolutely dead perfect doesn’t guarantee success.
I don’t think you’ll ever be able to serve “just like Pete” did back in his glory years (or probably even before or after!), and that’s not the point, the goal here is to improve upon a few simple fundamentals that allow you to serve with a purpose.
And that purpose doesn’t have to be where you have to serve in such a way that your opponent can never ever return it.
The big thing for me on the serve is to decide what the purpose of the serve is, and I’ve always felt that the serve is just a simple approach shot.
Either I’m going to play serve and volley where my serve is literally my approach shot, OR if I want to serve and stay back on the baseline, I’m going to serve in such a way that I’m hoping my serve can produce a short or weak return of serve that will allow me to then play my approach shot, OR my serve will pull my opponent wide into their alley where I can then play my approach shot into a big open court.
It doesn’t always work out that way where my serve ends up outside of my opponent’s strike zone either because that particular serve didn’t produce my intended result of direction, spin, depth, etc OR because my opponet simply guessed right as to where I was going to serve and was waiting for it.
But I don’t ever measure how I’m doing by each and every point. I try to keep the big picture in perspective, and just because I spin a serve out wide for example and my opponent rips it for a winner, that doesn’t mean I won’t go out there again either the very next point or later in the match.
Lots of players try one serve strategy (placement, depth, pace, spin, etc.), get burned, and figure that they can’t go back there ever again. Wrong. And I’ll admit this to my opponents right here and now that if I get burned on a point that I’ll most likely go right back to that same place the next time because my opponent is probably thinking I won’t go there again because of what just happened the point before.
If nothing else, I want to make sure I’m never fearful of serving to a specific spot in any given situation and I want my opponet to know the same thing. I want to maintain that perception in their mind that I’m in control, not them, and to keep them guessing as to where I’m serving this next point.
In any case, I’m looking at my serve as the first shot in at least a two shot sequence. I don’t ever stand up there and tell myself I’m serving an ace, a one shot wonder.
Like an approach shot, I want to play it in such a way that it’s obviously not a complete set up for my opponent, that it’s probably not going to be an outright winner, and that I’m always thinking I’m most likely going to be playing at least one more shot after my approach (serve in this case).
So my mindset on my serve is to feel that I get zero benefit from rushing through the toss, the hit, and the finish in hopes of hitting an all out winner, an ace. If I aim my serve to a target as I might with an approach shot and it happens to become a winner, then great, but I can’t put pressure on myself to decide that this serve is going to be an ace.
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The point of this little rant is to think of the serve mechanics as what they do to help my serve become what I want it to be, and that’s a simple approach shot.
Even if I’ve decide that I’m going to serve and stay back, I still want to finish a step or two inside the baseline just in case my serve really stretches out my opponent (or my opponent anticipated one direction and my serve went to the total opposite direction) and I can now see that I’ve got a much better opportunity to move forward rather than staying back.
Too many players think their serve has to be this all or nothing weapon rather than as a opportunity that gets the ball out of their opponent’s natural strike zone by either stretching them out wide, jamming them close to their body, and/or getting their serve to bounce up and out of the strike zone.
Let’s be honest and real… The chances of any us being able to develop a serve “just like Pete’s” is absolutely zero.
However, a lot of this is relative in that we’re not having to serve to Andre so we don’t need a serve just like Pete’s even if we could develop one.
So, I’d rather see my students think of their serve as a shot that helps them #1 play a ball to their opponent that hopefully gets out of their opponent’s natural strike zone and minimizes the chances that their opponent is going to be able to tee off on our serve on a regular basis.
It’s going to happen from time to time, obviously, when our opponent rips a return that we either can’t handle or is an outright winner.
But if they’re able to do that on a consistent basis, either our opponent is guessing where we’re going to serve every time and/or our service motion is telegraphing our target.
You don’t have to have the biggest serve of all time to be able to get your serve consistently out of your opponent’s strike zone.
If I know where you’re going to serve, and even if you have the biggest serve in the western U.S., if I know where it’s coming, the effectiveness of your serve as a tool to get the ball out of my strike zone goes way, way down.
Being able to mix up your serve’s direction, speed, and spin depending on the situation in that particular service game and the set is an art of serving strategy.
I might show a serve placement strategy early in the first set only to possibly set up my opponent for future points later in the match if needed.
Or later in the match I will remember where I’ve served in this particular situation before and either go back to it or mix it up.
It sort of depends on my opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, and those things such as their strengths and weaknesses may slightly change throughout the match.
And a lot of it is just a simple guessing game. I’m trying to think what my opponent is thinking that I did in the past, what I might do now, and blah, blah, blah…
But back to my original point. We can get incredibly caught up in each and every tiny detail of every mechanic of the serve’s tossing motion and other apsects of the serve.
I can’t tell you that everyone’s serve should look just like the next player’s serve.
But, there a few specific mechanics that make it easier for you to play your serve as an approach shot or an eventual approach shot.
And an important result of those mechanics is to be able to “look” the same to your opponent before you make contact while at the same time being able to produce different serve directions, spins, etc. from that same “look”.
A fundamentally sound tossing motion can help you disguise your intended target.
Pete was a master at that and his opponents would regularly state that it wasn’t necessarily his raw power that made his serve so good, but it was Pete’s ability to force them to guess what kind of serving was coming and where.
His superb tossing motion helped him do that and, I believe, his fearlessness to serve to the same spot even if he’d just been burned by his opponent on the prior point.
If my approach shot (my serve in this case) directions relate to different setup positions, then from those different “looks”, I’m telling my opponent exactly where my shot is about to be played and I lose the advantage.
I want you to think about what Tom Stow used to always tell me about learning the strokes, and that is, you can learn every stoke mechanic by starting from the finish position.
If you know what you want your result to be at the end, then the stuff that happens prior to that will be easier to understand.
For me, the end result I want on my serve is to come out of my service motion on balance and either moving forward as an approach shot or being ready to move forward if that approach shot oportunity immediately presents itself. I don’t ever think of my serve as if it’s going to be a winner, an ace.
I can’t tell my opponent what they can and can’t anticipate and force them not to move towards my serve direction. If they guess where I’m going with my serve and I still hit my big bomb there, it won’t be an ace and I’ll mentally feel like I’ve failed, even if just slightly. I don’t want that mindset…
Think of your serve grip, your tossing motion, your toss placement, swing set up position, pronation, etc., etc., as how it helps you achieve what you want for your end result, and to me, that’s thinking of my serve as a simple approach shot in either singles or doubles.
Do I always serve and volley in singles? No, but like I said before, I always want to be ready to take advantage of an unintended opportunity if it presents itself.
If you’ve made it this far in this post, what can I say, let’s move forward, get into the net, and force our opponent to pass us.
Nice going…!
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