The Tennis Serve Is Extremely Complicated

Serving is one of the most important, if not the most important shot in tennis. Players are always looking for easy ways to add the extra 10 to 15 mph on their flat serve, sharper angles on the slice serve, or even a bigger “kick” on the kick serve.

Before trying to do all of those secondary things, it is important to understand that the serve is also the most complicated shot in all of tennis. The tennis serve is essentially a complex looping motion where the racket goes up, drops down, comes back up, and then goes down again, all on the non-hitting side of the body.

This movement creates a loop shape, and while it might seem relatively straightforward to grasp, it poses significant difficulties for players, whether they're beginners, intermediates, or even advanced players. Therefore, in today’s article, we will dive into why the tennis serve is notoriously challenging, especially for novice players, as well as how to simplify it.

Tossing Problems

The tennis serve, while seemingly straightforward in its looping motion, becomes extremely challenging for many players once they toss the ball into the air. Even experienced servers can struggle with this aspect.

When the ball is in the air, players often experience panic and worry about making contact with it, leading to two common mistakes.

In other words, novice players tend to minimize the range of motion during the racket drop phase. They make the toss lower, simplifying the task of hitting the ball. This results in a shallow, short movement, and players rarely achieve full extension during the serve.

Other players toss the ball lower, which makes contact seem less daunting. This low toss can lead to serves with a reduced range of motion. Now, to address these challenges, players can compartmentalize their serves into three basic styles.

Three Different Worlds

The first of these styles is the abbreviated serve. This style features a minimal backswing with the racket starting in a lower position. In the up together serve, the toss and racket's take-back occur simultaneously. Lastly, there is the lag serve. Here, the player tosses the ball first while the racket lags behind.

Understanding these styles can help players adapt their serves to their comfort levels and gradually develop a more fluid, effective motion.

The confusing thing with many players is that simplifying the serve seems to make sense. It appears simpler to have an abbreviated serve or an up-together type serve, rather than a complex one where you toss the ball first, and then the racket follows.

From a mental standpoint, many people believe that abbreviated and up-together serves are simpler. However, what often happens with players at all levels is that these seemingly simpler serves can turn out to be more complicated in practice compared to a serve performed with a lag.

No Energy Stored

As you improve your serve, you're going to start using your body, so you're not going to serve in a stationary position. You're going to execute power sources on the serve.

But in any case, you are not going to use the body in isolation. The body is going to help the arm. Now, let's say you start with an abbreviated serve and you toss the ball up. This is not going to give you a lot of time to load the body.

So, in essence, the serve will have to be performed with a lot of acceleration. And I'm not talking about the way the racket accelerates. The body will have to accelerate really fast. In other words, it will have to load and unload at a high speed.

To some extent, this is also true for the up-together type serve. There's not a lot of time to be wasted. Both arms are going up together, and now the body will have to load and unload rather quickly.

To The Moon?

Now, you're probably thinking, "Why not just throw the ball higher with the up-together serve?" Well, I'm going to tell you why that's not optimal.

If you go up together with the toss arm and the racket arm and you toss the ball higher, you are guaranteed to have to pause in the trophy phase. It will look something like this: you go up together, toss the ball higher, and now you have this pause in the trophy phase, which interrupts your swing momentum.

This is not the end of the world, and you will even see some elite-level players that serve like that. However, this is by no means an optimal serve technique because you want to build up swing momentum.

As the racket is traveling from here to here, it is suboptimal to go up into the trophy phase, pause, and then have to accelerate all over again.

So, what happens with a lot of players is that naturally, when they have these certain styles such as the abbreviated serve or the up-together serve, they will throw the ball a lot lower.  

When you are developing your serve and you throw the ball lower, it's going to be impossible for you to consciously work on things inside your serve. The entire thing will be over too quickly.

Too Fast To Know

Let's say you're working on your toss or you're trying to work on something specific in your take-up phase. Let's say that you're trying to work on power sources and load your body a certain way.

Because the serve is over so fast, in theory, this sounds like a good idea. But in reality, there's not a lot of time for you to consciously adjust things in your service motion.

See, the whole thing is just over too quickly. On top of that, a lot of players that toss the ball very low don't have fast enough body movements to adjust to a low toss. So often, they will compensate in other areas of their serve.

In other words, they will not load their body. The most common mistake that I see at the recreational level with players that have a low toss is that they serve with the arm in isolation.

They will use some rotational momentum, but it's pretty much an arm serve because there's simply not enough time to load the body.

Also, some recreational players will compensate for a low toss by not dropping the racket low enough. They will shallow out their racket drop. And on top of that, because the toss is so low, they can't time the ball right.

2x Playback Speed

All of us are aware of players at the elite level with fast service motions. It's an extremely small minority of players who have a fast serving motion like Nick Kyrgios, Roscoe Tanner, or the Bryan brothers.

The vast majority of elite-level serves have a slower rhythm. In other words, they toss the ball a little bit higher, usually serve with a lag that involves a pinpoint stance, and generally have a more gradually accelerating service motion.

The type of serves that go from zero to a hundred, like Kyrgios', are a rare find among elite-level tennis players. The reason for that is that these types of serves have to match the body and style of that specific player.

It needs to be a serve that came naturally to the player from day one. It's going to be impossible to adapt a serve with that style if it doesn't come naturally to you.

Compartmentalize

What you have to understand is that if you're developing your serve, compartmentalizing the serve can be a great benefit. This approach allows you to work on different aspects of the serve in isolation.

For example, you can work on the toss separately. Moreover, because the racket starts from a lower position with this style, it gives your body more time to load, and you'll be able to consciously load the body properly.

Think of it logically: you toss the ball first, and then the racket starts to go up gradually and slowly. As the racket is going up, you have all the time in the world to load the body perfectly and then accelerate the entire system into the contact.

Final Thoughts

If you think about it logically, even though this might seem more complicated, compartmentalizing the serve, going slow to fast, and tossing the ball a little bit higher will not only give you more time to execute all these actions but also make it a lot easier to work on your serve's development.

The reality of serving is that a quick serve can lead to issues. This works as more evidence that what you should do is compartmentalize your serve, take your time, throw the ball a little bit higher, and gradually move the racket up into the trophy phase. 

This approach will lead to much better serving results. Just don’t serve an entire cart worth of balls in one day. It doesn’t end well.