Much said recently about the terrible serving action of World's No 1 Safina.

She lost in Toronto, after serving 21 double faults, and once again the tennis coaches around the world give their views on this action.

I have put this serve on the site for you to look at and note some important points.

1) Look how high she tosses the ball

2) Watch her eyes and look to see that she looks directly up at the toss.

3) Now look at her eyes on contact with the ball - she is looking down the court!

You can use the stop controls on the player to see these points.

But now the tennis press and looking at Sharapova's new action, and read what top coach Robert Lansdorp says, and remember he was the one who gave Shara her great groundstrokes all those years ago:

" It’s atrocious, plain atrocious,” Lansdorp said. “Instead of keeping it simple, they make it so complicated for her. She bends down way too much. Her elbow drops. She falls down with her face to the left. It’s so atrocious. I used to tell her, throw a football. If she threw a football with that motion, it would hit her right smack in the face. She’s going to get injured more because she is using way too much body. She doesn’t really rotate [her shoulders] that much, she just bends a lot.”

Have a look at the new Shara serve, and listen to the comment

So if you are having a serving problem. just think of these two top players.

The serve can really be a problem at any level, getting into bad habits early on can be very difficult to change later.

Now  have a look at the serving masters, The Fed and Pete Sampras - don't they make it look easy!