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Written by John Debnam
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Sunday, 08 April 2007 04:31 |
As you all hopefully know, we are lucky to have Dave Smith Author of TENNIS MASTERY writing an article each month on the site.
He also offers to answer your questions re the game and his first question comes from Annabelle from Derbyshire England.
" I am now at a new school - boarding at Cheltenham Ladies College - and I am doing tennis lessons every monday but feel my serve has got worse!
Have read an article on your site about serves.
Is it better that I do a high or low ball toss?
Also I want to build up my strength.
What is the best way to do this?
Mum has suggested press ups.
Hello Annabelle,
Generally a slightly higher toss than you can reach is advisable for your serve. To low of a toss and you will not only be rushed to hit the serve correctly, but you will most likely be unable to create the proper body coil, leg thrust and body extension. A foot above your contact point is probably the average toss among most skilled players, although you will see some 6 inches and others as high as 2 feet!
Keep studying and learning about proper serve patterns. The serve takes time to master and should be done in progressive steps.
1. Make sure you are using and gaining comfort with the continental grip. Do as many skilled activities using this grip including bounces, (ups and downs), ball catches (tossing the ball up and catching it on your strings), and alternate bounces. Turing the racquet over so that you keep a bouncing ball up using a palm up and palm down alternate hits.
2. Learn to serve the slice serve first. Stand at the service line and learn to feel the racquet brushing the right side of the ball (if your right handed), stand sideways with your toss shoulder staying in front, pointed towards your target. Don't open up too early, a common fault of players starting to serve, where they face the net too early.
There are many other elements, too numerous to mention here. But good luck and keep working at it. And yes, your mum is correct in building your upper body strength by doing push ups among other exercises. (Push ups are the best tool also to prevent tennis elbow--besides using good form on your backhands!)
Good luck and keep us posted on your improvement!
Dave Smith
"Annabelle I remember reading sometime back that when the great Martina Navratilova wanted to build up her strength on the serve she used a length of elastic, tied a tin or something you can grip to it, and attached the other end to a door handle.Then picking up the tin, she made the forward serve action so the elastic stretched out.She did this 25 times a day for 3 days a week, and so she said it improved her power.
Just make sure you use a door that no one will open while you are doing this!!!
John
ps also it improves the strength on the backhand
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