Tennis Slice Serve Technique Vs Flat And Topspin Serves

A tennis slice serve is an important variation to have in your arsenal of shots, as it allows you to vary your serves and make them more unpredictable.

In this video article, we’ll analyze what happens with the wrist, the forearm and the rest of the technique when hitting a slice serve, and we’ll also compare it from different angles to a flat serve and to a topspin serve.

Slice Vs Flat Serve Technique

The best way to really get a good idea of what happens with the racket angle, wrist and forearm when hitting a slice serve is to compare it to a flat serve first.

We’ll compare both types of serves from 4 different angles and later on also put a slice and topspin serve side by side to find the main difference there.

a) Back View

The best way to start this comparison of serves is to look at them from the back view, which helps you see the court into which I serve.

What you’ll see throughout this comparison series of images is that the main difference between a slice and a flat serve is just a slightly angled racket face in relation to the ball at contact.

When we hit a flat serve, the racket face is aligned completely “flat” into the back side of the ball, and when we hit a slice serve, the racket is still slightly angled.

That’s basically the key condition that makes the ball fly at a significantly different trajectory and land 4 meters away from where the flat serve would land.

The other small difference that can be observed only in slow motion and in a side-by-side comparison is that on the slice serve the racket travels a bit more to the right after contact, whereas it moves more straight toward the target area on the flat serve.

This is not an intuitive way to think about the serve at first because we would assume that the racket path would indicate the direction of the ball’s trajectory. That’s not the case when hitting a slice tennis serve.

b) Left Side View

Looking at the slice and flat serve from the left side gives us another perspective on how small the difference of racket angles is at contact.

While you can still see some of the string bed on the slice serve, you can’t really see it on the flat serve because the camera was positioned parallel to the ball at contact. The result is that you can basically see just the frame of the racket head.

I personally feel that the racket is more angled on the side of the ball when hitting a slice serve, and that’s also my mental image.

We also teach to hit the ball more on the side for slice serves, yet what really happens is a just a slight angle change in a split second.

c) Right Side Angle

Looking at both serves from the right side shows us the same small racket angle difference. I’ve zoomed in on both rackets so that you can see better how small this difference is.

Remember that this small difference in the racket head angle is mostly what it takes to hit the ball with a side spin and about 4 meters (13 feet) away from where the flat serve down the T would land.

d) Front View

Looking at both serves from the front view also immediately shows us the small racket angle difference at contact.

By freezing the images as the racket is swinging upward toward the ball, we can also observe that the racket head has to start aligning earlier more toward the ball in order to hit the ball completely flat on the back side. On the slice serve, the racket head angle is lagging slightly behind.

Another interesting comparison is a few frames after contact as the pronation and internal shoulder rotation continue and affect the arm and racket path.

By overlaying two serves, we can see that there is a slight difference in racket head orientation a few hundredths of a second after the contact, but that happens too quickly to be seen by the naked eye at real speed and at a distance of around 24-25 meters where the returner stands.

If we continue just a bit further in the follow-through, you’ll see that both racket paths eventually catch up and the follow-through looks the same.

Slice vs Topspin Serve Comparison

A very common request is to also compare the slice and the topspin tennis serves, so in this last side-by-side view, we’ll look at both serves from the back view.

The key difference is, of course, the position of the ball toss, which will affect how the racket interacts with the ball.

The toss for the topspin serve is left of the green line, which tells us roughly where the middle of my body is, and the toss for the slice serve is on the right side of the green line.

You cannot actually hit a topspin serve if you don’t toss the ball in the right place; see the video below for better understanding:

The other key difference we can observe is the racket path after contact. Since we swing much more across the ball for a topspin serve, we’ll also see that the racket moves much more to the right after contact compared to the racket path on the slice serve.

It’s important to stay sideways longer when hitting a topspin serve. If we start rotating too quickly, we’ll change the racket path and hit the ball more on the side and actually hit more of a slice serve than a topspin serve.

Summary

The following points sum up what these side-by-side comparisons of different serve types tell us:

• the flat and the slice serve are almost the same when it comes to the toss and swing path up to the ball; the key difference is a slight racket angle at contact
• there is a small difference in the swing path after contact, but it’s basically invisible to the naked eye at normal speed and at the actual distance the returner observes the server
• what we feel and visualize is more pronounced than what actually happens
• the difference in the toss and racket path is quite significant when comparing the slice and the topspin serve

Hopefully these comparisons and slow motion clips help demystify a slice tennis serve. As always, your comments and questions are welcome!