Hi Philip,

I suggest you don’t really think about being in the air and not touching ground. Just serve as you do, keeping your toes touching the ground and gradually increase upward force.

Swing upwards, perhaps try a few kick serves and really try to impart lots of heavy top spin on the ball and you may find yourself leaving the ground at some point.

Again, no need to think about it, it may happen. If it doesn’t, no worries, what matters is high racquet head speed. Legs drive contributes only a little bit to the power of the serve…

This is an interesting video because I find that the best way for me to feel this “straight line” is to have my front foot go up on ‘tiptoe’ … but not actually leave the ground. In fact, as a recreational amateur level 3.5, I find it very difficult to actually have both feet leave the ground when serving. My front foot (at best) goes up on tiptoe during the contact phase.

You have mentioned before that leaving the ground is more a by-product of an upward action as opposed to having to consciously think about ‘jumping’. Nevertheless, I still struggle with this concept. For some reason, I find better balance if my front foot toe is in contact with the ground. If the toe leaves the ground, I have no more ‘reference point’ and I don’t know how high to toss the ball and my whole timing goes out the window resulting in shanking the ball. Any advice is appreciated!

Tomaz, Thanks again from Canada! — Philip

Hi Tunde,

The overhead is different because we hit the ball often in difficult situations.

Many times we may produce force for the overhead only with the pronation.

Hi Arturo,

Yes, the serve motion is very much an upward acceleration. Here’s a food for thought: the serve is everything up to the point of contact. After that the ball is gone, it doesn’t matter what you do.

So for some mental exercises you can look at a few serves of top pros and pause the video at the contact pooint.

Everything you saw from beginning until the contact is the “serve”. What you see after the contact is WHAT HAPPENS and not what we do. 😉

Thanks for all the great answers! So would you say that the serve is much more up than most other throws we make at such a short distance. I have always visualized the throw as forward but the serve is much more up than we realize. Would you say that most people would be helped by exaggerating the upward component of the throw in order to serve better?

Just wondering.

Thanks,

Arturo

Hi Robert,

You will feel the connection to the left foot if you are a righthander.

I chose a side view for the pros and my demos because I also wanted to show that there is no bending in the waist. So yes, there are two lines possible – one to the right leg which is slightly bent and one to the left leg which feels more straight.

This is very clear to see in the image of Roger Federer – see how you can draw almost a straight line from his left leg to the hand…

Hi Jack,

When I check the videos of second serves, I see extended body and arm, only the hitting point is slightly lower so that they can hit up.

Hi Arturo,

Even though the second serve is hit slightly more behind and at a lower contact point in order to hit up on the ball, the player’s body will be extended in the same way.

He will only hit the ball when his racquet is more horizontal.

Pause this video at 0:25 when Federer is hitting a second serve and you’ll see what I mean:

But it is true that top servers like Federer can hit any type of serve from the same toss (which is not what happens in the above video) so they do extend into the contact and only vary what they do with the “hand” to the ball.

Federer can’t hit an extreme top spin serve (a kick serve) from that same toss but he can hit a decent spin serve…

That’s why when he wants a real kick serve, it will be very obvious from the toss like in the video above at 0:25.