you want to take a couple serves yeah all right so one of the things that I
know from looking at videotape of myself yeah is you know I I have a quick serve
right I have a quick serve so so with the Quick Service motion and watching videotape of myself
but I've also looked at other guys that have quick serves I looked at dolgopolov looked at
um uh Bryan and then I but then I look at Nick and Dustin Brown right and I and you know there's been
a lot of comments about the left arm being here well if you look at Kyrgios and Dustin they're
because their motions are so quick their left arm doesn't go here or Beyond it it but I've been
playing around with it because what's one of the problems that I have is uh when I start rushing
you know the right shoulder everything starts collapsing a little too soon yeah
so I've been playing around and watching video of myself because I've watched it and that's
about as far as my arm ever got so I've been focusing on that what you're referring to is
the toss arm positioning after the ball has been released which basically could be in three ways it
can be forward it can be completely vertical or backwards or back so that that actually has more
to do with flexibility and comfort level than the Rhythm and the pace of the service motion
okay so you're somebody like John Isner who has a lag it doesn't have a necessarily fast service
motion he still has the arm forward he does too right but then there's some other players like
Andy Roddick with a quick motion who has his arm completely backwards like this right right so it
doesn't really depend on the tempo of the serve it rather depends on the player's Comfort level
and none of these positions of the toss arm are wrong are wrong because what should happen on the
toss arm is that it continues to go up after the ball has been released so that you can get a tilt
so if I release the ball here and then I continue to go to here I still went
past the moment of release and I was able to accomplish a tilt in my shoulders right so I
don't necessarily have to go here to be able to tilt my shoulders because the important part is
tilting my shoulders is that instead of being here we're here yeah you want to tilt your shoulders
and so and so the degree of the left arm can change well it depends also on other factors
of the serve maybe how much you are putting your hip into the court how much you're bending your
body forward and backward the entire thing has to make sense but there's going to be some players
who find a lot of discomfort with putting their arm completely backward right and there's some
players that have very comfortable with that movement so it's more of a style rather than a
fundamental element of the serve the fundamentals are going to be a toss arm position that continues
to go up after the ball has been released so that you can get a tilt on the serve okay right gotcha
there's that Quick Serve
now you always serve like that right always from day one yeah well so when I was a kid
you know I I you know I know we're not supposed to do this but I tried to look at a pro that I
wanted to style my serve yeah and mine back in the day was Roscoe yes even though he's a
lefty right so there's something about his motion when I saw it that I fell in love with and so you
know I I try I went out on the court and I started copying it and so then I you know it turned into
you know it turned into a Quick Serve and I've had it since I was a kid and now I you know I guess
I guess it's kind of coming back a little bit I don't see that you don't see it no not at all
who has it who is who is it coming back from well I mean yeah I look at you know
the by Nick Bob I'm tired Bob and Mike Bryan they're retired yeah Dustin's retired now
uh Kyrgios okay okay he's still going Ons Jabeur has a quick service ons okay um
he has a quick one kind of right well he goes so far into the court it's a minority of players who
serve that way okay that's my point why because naturally that's the more difficult way to serve
it's not a wrong way to serve right and if you did this and you did this from day one but if you do
this from day one it's okay yeah if you have a fast enough body movements to accommodate this
type of tempo on the serve it's perfectly fine but the problem is that a lot of players they like
the Kryrios serve and they like to copy this at the rec level yeah and they can't do this serve because
their body is not moving fast enough so they end up with all kinds of serve problems because they
try to hit a speedy service motion like that right most commonly they don't have
full extension at the moment of contact they're missed they're not sinking their
toss with their hitting arm properly and all kinds of issues are created
by a fast motion so it's not a wrong way to serve but it's a very difficult it's a
minority that's why I ask you have you always served like that and you say yes yeah
it was getting eaten alive yesterday Nick yeah
let me see your first serve again go back to first serve
go again first serve
go ahead and flatten it out okay let me see it
okay go back to kick serve
so to me like fundamentally there's a lot of good things happening on your serve you're doing a lot
of things correctly the one thing that bothers me a little bit is the toss height so again I
don't have a problem with your toss Tempo but if you could try to toss the ball just
a little bit higher because I'm suspecting that you're not hitting with full extension on some
of your kick serves especially yeah I think you are hitting with extension on your first
serve but on the kick serve I think the arm is slightly bent here so you're gonna lose a lot of
net clearance number one and you're going to lose range of motion and power if you
don't hit your kicker with a full extension so my recommendation is
the flat server is looking pretty good but on the kick serve throw the ball a
little bit higher okay okay and let's see what happens get it yeah it's a little bit higher
even more more yeah even more
even more exaggerate let's see what happens exaggerate the toss throw it way up high come on
you see how all of a sudden it's getting more net clearance do it again but you
lost kick there because you hit through come on throw it higher
do you see the shape of the ball changing do it again throw a little bit higher
you see the difference yeah now your hitting The Back Fence off of one bounce now it's you're
losing a little bit of kick so it won't change anything the only thing you're changing is the
ball height you keep everything else the same because the fundamentals are good on the kicker
well I mean you you want to have a slight bend on the kicker but I think I'm making contact here
you don't want to have a bend no no zero no so it should be it should be at full extension
and then and then the hand it's a lateral swing path okay yeah there's going to be a little bit
of movement of the of the wrist on the kick naturally but you don't have to worry about
that part the only thing you have to do is throw the ball higher okay so that simple
the belief that you have to have a bent arm on the kick and then extend the stems from this idea that
you have to hit up on the kicker and let the ball drop lower that's not true it's not true no it's
not you hit the kick serve with a full extension every single time if you don't you're gonna lose
like I said the belief stems from this idea that you can hold the ball on the strings for seconds
and people don't realize that the ball is on the strings milliseconds so if you contact the
kickstarter with the bent arm and but it but the ball is going to touch the racket and it's going to
be gone right away the arm's still going to be bent you don't have time to hold the ball here
and extend your arm it's not going to happen it's impossible okay so so toss location is in the same
spot toss location is good okay it just needs a little bit more height so you can be more extended
what you're going to gain from being more extended you're going to meet the ball at
a higher level you're going to naturally get more net clearance and you're going to have
a longer lever which will give you more range of motion and more potential for power and and uh
and what about what about the the leg Drive is the leg drive I mean you know obviously we're going up
more should I focus you know that's my upper body that's my toss that's coordination from
here up but on the lower body am I doing anything different with my with my feet
besides going but generally the fundamentals on the serve which is going to be your your
power sources they're going to be exactly the same on all serves except the fact that you're
not going to rotate on your kick so everything that you do on your first serve you do on your
on your everything that you do on your flat serve you're doing your kick serve except the fact that
you're going to rotate I should be staying more so when you say like leg Drive I mean I don't
think you can time jumping on the serve properly you're probably not thinking
about it you're doing it anyway okay I don't know you tell me well I definitely
think that I I I feel like I on my second serve I should do it okay do a flat serve okay hit it
oh do it again you threw it a little too far in front okay
that was a fast serve do another one okay
okay that was a nice looking serve so did you consciously jump on that one no you did
no I wasn't thinking about my feet at all there you still became Airborne yeah right so that's
what I call a passive leg Drive okay so there is leg involvement no doubt about it but it's
not an actual jump where you're jumping right you just you just told me you didn't do it and
yet you came off the ground so that's your proof that you are straightening you are using the legs
but it's happening in conjunction with the entire body straightening so it's not
the leg straightening isolation the entire body is loaded like this and now you straightening
and going up towards the ball there's the cart wheel there's a straightening of the
Torso there's all these things happening and yes the legs are straightening too
very very true but you're not consciously driving the legs and jumping up on a serve because first of
all that doesn't happen in isolation and it's not something that you could ever time properly and do
at the conscious level so you already like I said you have really good fundamentals on your serve
you have a lot of things going for you the only thing that I see is the toss height toss height
on on second serves and a little bit on the first too sometimes yeah you know where also you may be
throwing a little bit too far behind the Baseline and this for so I would try to get the toss and
I'm talking about like it's like this much higher not much not much just a little bit okay and I
think you're gonna get get a lot of benefits from that okay so try a few more seconds here hold on
that is so much better but let's exaggerate a little bit and go even higher okay
maybe the best one you hit so far but I'm looking for like one bounce until it hits
The Back Fence okay all right even more even more I want to kick it into that fence okay okay
better no that's too low one more thing that you can add on the kick serve is forward momentum
that's what a lot of people like don't think about when I do kick serves but you actually
do want to go forward okay so so you do want to throw the ball slightly inside the Baseline and
slightly lean on it okay so you're you're going yes you're going up towards the ball but you also
want to go forward a little bit okay that going forward on the kick is going to add a little bit
of pace to it as well so try that so so the toss has to be slightly inside the court gotcha on the
kick where do you think it is right now well it's often here yeah so you're more like straight up
and down with your body okay so I like you to lean forward you still want to throw a little
higher but also lean on the kick server a little bit get your body more underneath the ball okay
because you still want to make contact like right above your head that's the proper contact on the
kick yeah like I mean this relation so your content is going to be like here okay where
in your flat serve is going to be in front of your head okay yeah on a kick it's going to be
here right above your head so when you throw it in front you really have to get your body into the
court okay so you get underneath the ball all right better oh do it again and throw a little higher
one more time that was probably the best one you hit so far
throw a little bit higher
put your body underneath just a little bit higher all right
so you notice they're now hitting The Back Fence off of one bounce
first one do you see the difference yeah yeah there's more right location there so we're
buying more net clearance yes you got a little bit more net clearance so just a little bit higher
on your toss it's not going to change your serve Rhythm it's not going to be a fast Rhythm
don't worry about that you don't have to change the sub Rhythm it's good and so you're going to
throw a little bit higher and you're gonna you're gonna go forward on your kick serve
okay all right on your flat serve and your slice you also want to keep in mind that you want to go
forward even more so you can throw the ball even more inside the court and use forward momentum
all right if you see that a lot of your first serves are going into the net throw the ball a
little bit higher too okay gotcha but again like there's a lot of great things going on on your serve a lot
of great fundamentals it's just about adding those small little pieces to make it better okay so you
told me you played a match against this young guy and he was eating up your second serves
so generally like if you hit a second serve and the ball is bouncing twice before it reaches The
Back Fence that means that the ball has a lot less height on it and the guy can comfortably
wait for the ball to get into his Strike Zone and smack a forehand on you as opposed to when you're
practicing the ball goes bounce and then straight into the fence that means that it's going to be a
little bit more here okay and now it becomes much more difficult to be aggressive as a returner you
might have to step in or back up and now it's timing that's kind of tricky on a kick now all
of a sudden this is an adequate second serve that's not going to be attacked so much okay I
mean does it make a difference you know like when I practice my kick Nick you know I move the cone
you know up more you know I I kind of I try to hit my kicks more here rather than rather than
here I love that I love it is that good I think it's phenomenal all right yeah that's that's what
I try to do too it's kind of a tough Target to hit but if you can hit it there the ball will
exit the court with a steep trajectory you're gonna get a lot of benefits from that yeah