Using Your Serve

Having a strong serve means more than just hitting aces.

Most players think of the serve as a power shot. But that’s shortsighted. Sure, hitting aces and service winners are desirable results, but it’s not realistic to rely on such shots. To be an effective server, you need to learn to use your serve in an offensive way to construct a point. It’s a different philosophy from trying to serve your opponent off the court. To me, there’s a subtle art to moving your serve around to different parts of the box and mixing up your pace and spin so you can be aggressive from your first shot. It’s using your serve as a setup shot rather than a finisher. Here’s how to get it done.

**BEGINNER

**OBJECTIVE: Develop a consistent toss and learn the slice.
When you’re starting out, learning to hit different locations on a regular basis starts with a consistent ball toss. If your toss is regularly in the right spot, you can get away with some idiosyncrasies in your motion. Your first goal should be to keep the toss out in front of your body—just about in line with your hitting shoulder— and make contact at full extension. Once you can control the toss, concentrate on placing the serve. The slice out wide is an effective delivery to add to your game. For a right-handed player this means using that serve in the deuce court (ad side for lefties) and dragging your opponent into the doubles alley. Toss the ball around 1 o’clock (11 o’clock for lefties) and hit the right outside edge to create slice. The spin naturally pulls the ball off the court. If you’re successful with this serve, you’ll have a great one-two punch: go out wide, then hit into the open court. Forcing a beginner to hit on the move will win you many points. Again, this is a setup shot rather than a power serve. Also, remember that you want to be on the baseline or inside it after your serve to respond to a potentially weak reply. Don’t serve and back up. Once you know that your slice is well-placed, make sure you’re in an offensive position so you can take advantage of it.

INTERMEDIATE

OBJECTIVE: Incorporate more power sources and move your serves around.
Things can get a little complicated at this stage. Although you don’t want to adopt a pure-power mindset, to be effective you do need to put some pace on the ball. But you have to balance that with consistency and accuracy. At the beginner level, players tend to rely mostly on their arms to get power on the ball. Now you have to start using more of your body and incorporating big muscle groups into your motion. Start with shoulder rotation. Turn away from your opponent during your backswing and uncoil toward your target as you move your racquet to contact. Then try to focus on getting your legs to drive you up and into the court. Tapping into more power sources while maintaining the fundamental mechanics of the service motion will give you controllable and consistent power.

As your serve develops, so should your tactics. Diversifying your locations will keep your opponents off-guard and open up opportunities on your second ball. Serve and volley occasionally, or, if you’ve started to use one, hit a kick on your first serve up high to your opponent’s backhand— these plays will disrupt his return rhythm. And when you get to a big point, it’s a smart play to serve to your opponent’s more vulnerable side, as this will put pressure on him to come up with a big reply.

ADVANCED

OBJECTIVE: Set up your strengths and practice hitting to locations.
Ironically, sometimes serving at advanced levels can require less thought than serving at other stages of development. If you’re a pure server with a huge delivery, many times you can rely on that skill to overpower your opponents. They know what’s coming, but it’s tough for them to do anything about it. Still, there aren’t many rec players with this ability, so I think it’s important to structure a strategy that plays to your strengths. For instance, let’s say you have a formidable forehand that you like to use to control rallies. A good, hard serve up the middle or into the body in the deuce court is a difficult shot for your opponent to pull back toward your backhand. You now have an opportunity to step around the ball and hit your favorite shot. Using a high-bouncing kick out wide in the ad court is another way to set up the forehand. But beware of your location on wide serves. Whereas beginners often have trouble with this serve, if you give advanced players a lot of angle and don’t put them on the defensive, they’ll hurt you with the return. In other words, placement, more than pace, is key.

Much of your success will revolve around hitting spots with your serve. If you can’t do that at this level, your opponents are going to zero in on your serves and take advantage of your inconsistency. Practicing your location by setting up targets wide, into the body, and down the T is a reliable method for improving the accuracy of your serves. Make sure you can hit different spins to each location, too. Just like a pitcher in baseball, you want to be able to spot the ball with each of your serves to keep the returner guessing.