Serve is important at all levels of performance. Either you start your journey with tennis or you compete on US Open courts the rules are the same. Serve starts every point. If you want to have fun on the court and achieve decent results you have to possess solid serving skills.

Marcin Bieniek

Before you start working on serve effectively firstly you have to understand why this stroke is special. All shots in tennis depend on the opponent except from serve. If you want to hit forehand you have to read and adjust to the opponent ball. If you want to hit volley you have to take proper position while responding to passing shot. Serve is different. You have 100% control over this stroke. Your opponent can’t do anything to have significant impact on your delivery. Additionally if something feels uncomfortable even after you started serving motion you can always catch the ball and repeat all over again without losing the point. Can you do the same with forehand or backhand? I don’t think so.

Knowing why serve is so special it is really important to use it properly. Everything depends on you. You decide what kind of ball you want to deliver to your rival. Unfortunately many players don’t use this opportunity to play on own terms from the first ball of the point. Typical scenario is that: tennis player gets to the baseline and hits the ball to start the point. From time to time they will decide before the shot whether they want to hit it to the forehand side or to the backhand of the opponent. That’s waste of serve. You should consider more factors to make sure you can get advantage during your service gems.

Every time you step to the baseline you have 24 different ways to hurt your opponent’s game. Yes! 24 ways and this number is just for basic tactical factors. Generally there are many more ways but at the beginning let’s focus on the basics. Up to this moment you have probably used consistently only several factors while serving. It is time to expand your knowledge and possibilities. It is time to have 24 different ways to put pressure on rival who is returning.

Directions

There are 3 basics directions while serving. You can place the ball to your opponent’s forehand , to the body or to backhand side. Every direction has own advantages. Wide serve opens the court for the next shot. Body serve challenges player’s quickness and coordination. Serve to the T can surprise rival and can be used to put opponent on the run on the next attempt. When you have your own service gems you should always think where to send the ball and why you want to send it exactly there.

Spin

Planning your serve has to include proper choice regarding spin. You can choose between topspin, slice, kick and flat serve. All these spin variations offer individual benefits for the server. Topspin is the easiest to execute so you can use it to have high percentage of consistency. Slice skids away from the returner and bounces low after contacting the court so you can use these facts to challenge return. Kick serve has a big opportunity to receive weaker response when served effectively to the backhand. Flat option is strictly reserved for the first serve and it is really effective in combination with right amount of power. Connect good direction with different spins and it will be much easier to win own service gems.

Depth

Apart from different directions and spins you can also apply mixed depths into your serving strategy. Every time you hit the serve you can place the ball shorter or deeper. Shorter balls will take most of the rivals inside the court so you can capitalize on this positioning with the next shot. Deeper balls immediately put more pressure on returning response and can give you easy ball to attack with your next shot. Consciously vary depths of your serves and you will discover how this little detail can change quality of your delivery.

To sum it up right now you know 24 basic possibilities to serve. Every time you have balls in hand and you can start the point you should consider 3 directions, 4 spins and 2 depths before you serve. By taking this approach you will improve quality of your serve, force your opponent to constantly adjust to changing environment and finally win service gems in much easier way.

If you enjoyed this article, please don’t forget to tap . You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you.