Serving Part One

 Hello Readers,

I've wanted to do a post or two on serving.  There are a couple of reasons for that.  I've taught it in a lot of beginner classes, and beginners struggle with it.   Also some very nice intermediate plus players struggle with it too.  And then there are the yips -- when you have lost your serve and wonder where it went.  It was around here Monday, but today it has vanished.

Let's talk yips first.  I had a friend who lost her serve and I offered to help.  Now, I'm no authority, but if I have a consistent part of my game, it's serving.  One a good/God week playing playing four or more times at three hours per outing, I usually would miss one serve.  And that's one per week.  

I looked up the yips a bit, it occurs in a couple of my other sports.  I was surprised to learn that major league baseball pitchers get them too.  And they lock up so badly, they can't pitch much at all.  I had never heard of that and you can imagine the expensive issues for clubs and players when it happens.

It also shows in golf, usually with putting.

Solutions...  There are solutions.  There is a guy out there who claims to be able to fix baseball pitchers over the phone.  He doesn't say how and it's a trade secret, he wants some money for his consultation and cure, obviously worth it to save a million dollar career.

The golf problem is not as simple as far as I know.  Bernard Langer famously got the yips three times in his career and fixed it each time.

OK, back to PB...  

When I teach beginners I just tell them where they should hit the ball, middle of the service box, but then you knew that!  And have them try it.  This works reasonably well for most of them.  I don't like to pass on much technical information as it would be hard to remember it, and I think the purpose of the beginner lessons should be to give the players just the skills to enable them to join a beginner game know the mechanics of what to do and where to stand/be and that's about it.

Some of the issues I see with them is that they don't hit the ball hard enough, don't hit it close enough to their knee, and their feet are not aligned with the target.

I had one group of beginners and they were all tennis players.  They all made a nice step forward before swinging at the ball.  While this is not essential, I like it for several reasons.  It gets the entire body moving into the shot, the legs have to be reasonably aligned or it will feel awkward and with this, there is some inherent timing for the arm swing.  

Back to the yips...  Firstly, this is mostly a mental problem, but it's a good idea to make sure of the above fundamentals.  So, make sure the stance is angled towards the middle of the service box, feet close together, a step towards the target, ball drop, and hit the ball from near the front knee and obviously drive it up, well over the net.

Beginners, by the way, rarely hit the ball hard enough.  "Hit the back fence," I tell them.  Sometimes that works.

If you are intermediate player with the yips, then you should be doing all of the above.  The error I see with this is the contact point of the ball.  People want to hit it when it's very high -- thigh or waist!  And they don't drop the ball close enough to their body.  When that combination happens, we get really ugly, high serves with no pace.  

Let me mention bounce serves here.  The bounced ball does not bounce very high and if you are going to hit it at all, you have hit it from a very low location.  I like that.  The timing of the drop, step, and swing are a bit different, but it inherently has good things going for it.  I think mostly the timing is easier for a beginner.  If you haven't played a lot of tennis, then the drop serve might seem difficult as it can be imagined that there is not a lot of time in which to actually hit the ball.  This is not true, gravity is not that "fast" and you have a large part of a second to hit the ball.  

If the mechanics are sound, then also make sure of the grip and paddle presentation to the ball.  I'm happy with the continental or shake hands grip, though I think a western grip makes a lot of sense for serves only because it's an efficient way to generate more top spin.

The above techniques have to be trusted by the server.  If they are not, then we are creating doubt and angst.  Bitte, keine Angst!

If the mechanics are all correct and the serves are still yippy, then we have to calm the mind.  A routine of bouncing the ball a couple of times before each serve or touching the back net are examples of getting ready by creating a comfortable routine.  This is common in many sports.

If all of the above is fine and the serves are still a mess, then the fine motor skills are letting us down and there is some paddle position that wrong.  Make sure that your paddle hand, paddle, forearm, upper arm, etc., are pointing to above the net at impact.  The paddle face should be square to this swing path.  If the ball is not going in the correct direction, then the wrist/hand have to be the problem.

How do we correct that?  There are two techniques for this.  In the Inner Game of Golf by Gallwey, he suggests just paying attention to the hand position and grading it from 1 to 5, 5 being where you want it to be.  Gallwey and found that this is a feedback loop and will create the proper position after some repetition.  You swing, score the position, say it's a 2.  Then do it again and you should see things moving towards 5 as the brain is a wonderful thing.  Gallwey's books are quite interesting and if you are in to sport performance, I recommend them.

The other means, and I don't know where I got it, is to give your hand (or arm, or anything) a task to do.  And we want it to be a positive task, i.e., "do X" we don't want to try to, "Don't do Y."  The thinking on this is that the task will help the mind properly do the right thing, rather than what it's doing to make a bad serve.  A good task would be point to the top of the back fence when hitting the ball, or, wrist firm, as I will cut across the ball.  This is some basic conscious attempts at control, but note that is all of this we are dwelling on specific technique.  Your body will respond and improve things as you request better outcomes.

OK, that's probably enough for this.  I think I'm going to go over more of the basic structure in another post for beginners.