Miraculously, I learned to serve (flat, spin, top spin) even before I learned the forehand.

Now I want the first serve to be flatter, stronger, hence looking at the tips here.

Thank you very much for sharing your experiences. Yes, one thing at a time, keeping it simple for the player to digest it.

Their brain is already fully engaged by calculating the ball flight, timing, moving to the ball, at what angle and speed and amount of spin they’ll hit the ball, etc.

I’ve worked with my daughter for the the last couple of years and we’ve both learned that concentrating on more than one specific thing at any given time is a recipe for frustration and failure. For example her former coach had her doing a unit turn on her forehand and stopping like a statue before bringing the racket back to be prepared for the ball.

He taught it in two steps which really caused huge problems for her.. She ended up hitting late on balls with pace. Finally I explained to her what her coach wouldn’t.. that it’s one smooth motion not two. I gave her instructions to do nothing but work on her forehand prep for a few months.. and ignore the issues with everything else. Within a few weeks she was hitting the best forehands she’s ever hit…

I have to keep reminding myself not to concentrate on too much.. Another example: She has been playing some of her best tennis over the last few weeks… until she played a boy last week that she should should have easily beat. She was playing horrible and we were both disappointed and confused about it..

When reviewing her performance it dawned on me that I was yelling instructions from the side, “your swing on the return is too big. You’re not getting low enough on the BH. You’re racket is stopping on your serve.” I was falling back into the terrible habit of trying to coach her from the sidelines and thereby causing her to think about every single thing she was doing. No wonder she played so poorly and it was all my fault!!!

One thing at a time is the biggest lesson I’ve learned when it comes to improving technique, along with distinguishing between practice and playing. In practice we work on a bunch of things. In practice match or sets, she works on one or two (usually one) things. In a real/usta/tournament match she works on nothing and tries to get her mind out of her way.

Ive seen a lot of coaching over the past few years and I can tell you that your kids are at the mercy of their coach. I finally took over as my daughter’s coach after realizing that there is no connection between being a great player and a great coach. I can often see things in developing players that other coaches miss and I can almost always articulate and explain things better.

My daughter’s former coach is a great guy, a great player and a very motivating and encouraging guy but he does not explain things well.. I’ve seen him coaching her and I wanted to run on the court and explain to my daughter what he means because he often does a poor job of articulating what he wants out of his students.

Thanks for the tips!

Hi Rick,

You may only control the serve from near the net is you take the task too literally. As if it is a MUST to hit a service box.

It is not. The goal is to give you freedom to smack the ball. Don’t aim anywhere, just smack the ball down in the court and release.

The same goes for back fence – you don’t need to hit or aim for the back fence. You simply smack 😉 the ball horizontally and let it fly.

There are no targets that you “have” to hit. It’s about letting go.

If you want to serve from the baseline into the service box, you will almost always apply too much control.

If you insist, then in order to increase the racquet head speed, swing something heavier first – like a baseball bat or a racquet with a cover on.

Swing a few times, then switch to a regular racquet and it should feel much lighter.

The 2 drills you mention are well known actually, so they surely must work for quite some people (i hope). Unfortunately they are not working for me and are even detrimental.

They make make think about targeting, controlling, and even make me think about my technique. Just the things the drills are supposed to get rid of.

Even if they might teach faster muscle action, I am afraid they also teach wrong things on the side because of the unrealistic weird targets (ground in front and fence back).

Do you perhaps have some alternate tips or drills to improve muscle firing speed from around the normal service position?

Thanks.

Hi Juan,

Yes, mostly it’s about the repetition just trying to hit the same target over and over again so that you store the serve in your memory.

I’ll see if I can show some serving drills for consistency on this site in the near future.