Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis today I want to show you how to hit a
slice serve
The slice serve is a must have serve for every tennis player and it is a great
advantage to sneak in that occasional ace you surprise your opponent with a
nice short slice out wide or if you can slice out wide open up the court and
then take control of the rally is a big advantage and for all you lefties out
there if you're a lefty and you don't know how to hit a slice and you must
learn how to the slice because lefties have a huge advantage when they're
serving on important points in the game at thirty forty or forty thirty ad in
ad out. They have the advantage to be able to slice to a righties backhand
and win the big points with a nice slice serve and some of the greatest
slice serves of all time came from lefties. Goran Ivanisevic hit
thousands of aces with his slice serve. John McEnroe had one of the all-time
great slice serves out wide and Rafael Nadal utilizes his slice serve to
control the point with his forehand. The right-handers do not have as big of an
advantage on the slice serve and because when a righty plays a righty the
slice serve will go into the opponent's forehand and therefore must be struck
very precisely. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't use slice serves because you
can use it in various ways you can serve to the body and have the ball
come into the opponent's body you can even do it to the backhand side and so
it's a very versatile serve.
The slice serve can be hit with two different grips it can be the
continental grip or the eastern backhand grip. If you slide your hand over slightly
towards the backhand side you will find it's a little bit easier to get the cut
on the ball
The toss on the slice is best from the
12 o'clock position. So let me demonstrate it I'm gonna throw the ball
at 12 o'clock and I'm gonna try to slice this serve.
Another way to get slice
would be to throw the ball a little bit more to the right and it towards one
o'clock let me try this one
So there it's a little bit uncomfortable for me
because I am used to tossing the ball at 12:00 and but I can see that can be a
bit an advantage for some players to simply throw the ball a little bit to
the right and the racket will already start going towards the right side and
it's very easy to get slice it this way
The body position on the slice can involve a little bit more of a coil and
in the preparation phase. John McEnroe was famous for having a great
lefty slice where he would basically have his body all the way turned like
this it would a huge coil and then he would come around the serve
this way and get tremendous slice on his serve. So you should
definitely try out a coiling a little bit more and when you're attempting to
do a slice serve.
The swing path on the slice serve is going to be identical to the flat serve
swing path until contact and once we make contact and this is where the
slice serve differentiates from the flat serve and the racquet it will start going
towards the right and then back around the body this way. It was very important
and at the palm of the hand and the racket face are facing the sky on the
finish. Something like this so we're gonna coil and this bigger coil is
going to help us generate this rightward swing path and then we come
around the body we want the palm of our hand and the face of the racket to
point towards the sky like this.
Is there continuing pronation on the slice serve? Yes and no. Some players will
continue to pronate even on slice serves. Roger Federer is a player who will pronate on
all serves on the flat serve the kick serve and the slice serve and many others do
it the same way and it looks to the following way. Roger Federer will have
the same swing path as any other player on the slice but the only difference is
that when the racket goes towards the right let's say it was the right net
post his arm will fully rotate this way and then come back around like this.
Other players such as Andy Murray or many of the WTA players will not
continue a pronate on the slice. Their serve action is going to look
something like this. The racket will go towards the net post and it will not
continue to pronate it will simply scoop back around this way and I can show you
towards the camera and so the racket will not pronate like Roger Federer does but it
will just stay on edge and it will scoop around this way on the slice.
Continuing pronation should never be the focus of any of your serves. Not the
flat serve the kick serve or the slice serve. If you are interested in
finding out the reason why you can check out my pronation video and i'm going to
put a link in the description below. Furthermore, if you do try to force this
continuing pronation on your slice serve you will find it very difficult to get slice
on the slice serve. Let me explain why and most players if they consciously try to
pronate on the slice serve and most of their serves are going to go towards the
right and they actually have kick on the serve instead of slice. It doesn't make
sense to us that if we consciously do the continuing pronation the slice serve it
doesn't make sense that the racket will continue going this way and the ball is
supposed to go in another direction. So this has to happen intuitively and
you cannot force this and furthermore if you try to force this continuing
pronation on the slice serve most of your slice serves will actually have spin on them
and you have a very difficult time getting the ball out wide which is the
usually the desired location for a slice serve. So let me demonstrate I'm going
to forcefully pronate on this one and try to slice it at the same time.
You see the ball didn't really have any leftward trajectory and I found it very
difficult to get slice on it. So let me try to do the pronation without thinking
about it I'm going to perform a slice and let's see what happens.
I'm not sure if I pronated on this serve or not and it really doesn't matter all I go by is
how to serve feels and that one felt great I had that low bounce that's very
desired on the slice and the ball had a slight skipping action at towards the left
The most important aspect of the slice serve is the mental image we're going to
create when executing the serve and the mental image should be one of a
scooping action around the ball. We already discussed that the bigger coil
helps with this action it can promote this action and once we approach the
ball we're going to just visualize a scooping action around the body and this
is where the finish is very important and we're going to focus on the finish
on the slice having our palm of our hands up towards the sky and the strings
are going to face up towards the sky and this is going to help us to make a
contact that's going to be going towards the right after contact and that
is what generates the slice.
Is it easy to make the ball skip to the left on the slice. Just as it is on the
kick serve it's very difficult to make the ball go at the one side or the other.
On the deuce side for right handers it's a little bit easier just because of the
geometry of the court. So if I attempt to hit a slice from this side it's gonna be
a little bit easier for me to make the ball go to the left just because of the
angle I'm standing at
So there I missed that one but the second bounce was
outside the doubles alley and that's what I'm looking for. Let me try one more and
try to get that nice short angle.
Okay that was a little bit better and just
because I'm serving from this side I get a nice leftward trajectory on my slice serve.
If we attempt to hit a slice on the ad side through the middle of the
court aiming down the T it's very challenging to get the ball to curve
towards the left. This is for right-handers of course. The reason why
is the geometry of the court so if I'm standing on this side serving towards
the right the ball is going to have a slight rightward trajectory even
if I aim towards the T. And the greatest servers of all time all had
this slice serve down the T. Players such as Goran Ivanisevic, John McEnroe, Pete Sampras
Roger Federer or John Isner all can get beautiful aces through the middle of the
court where the ball curves away from the opponent. So let me try one of these
serves and see what happens I'm going to aim for the T and try to get as much
cut on the ball as I can
Thank you guys for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. Please hit that like
button. Subscribe if you haven't already and please leave a comment in the
section below I will be happy to respond. I'll see you next time