The greatest female servers of all time all have certain technical similarities
on their serves. And why this can improve your serve we'll get to later in the video
but first let's check out what these similarities are. And the three technical
elements of the serve that I'm about to show you apply to the top ten ace
leaders on the WTA in the year 2019 and overall in the top hundred the numbers
are very similar and it also applies to the greatest female servers of all time.
So the first thing that all these female players have in common on their serves
is the lag. And what is a lag? Well basically you're going to lag the racket
behind your toss. Something like this.
And it's no coincidence that a lot of WTA players serve with the lag because
you can get a lot of swing momentum from lagging the racket behind. So basically
what happens to the take-back when we toss the ball first is that the racket
really does not have any time to stop. So there's not gonna be any pauses in the
trophy phase and the racket will gradually accelerate and therefore on the serve
you can create a lot more swing momentum.
And serving with the lag does not depend on any particular backswing. So you could
have a full backswing where the racquet arm is fully extended either going
towards the side fence or straight towards the back fence and still lag the
racquet behind the toss arm. It would look something like this. So here's a
full backswing with a lag. And the lag also works with a semi abbreviated
backswing where the racket goes up into the trophy phase in a more lateral way.
And it looks something like this.
And you could apply a lag serve to a semi
abbreviated take back with a bent arm that closely resembles an abbreviated
take back and basically what you would do is toss the ball first and then don't
allow the arm to straighten out and basically keep it bent and then lag the
racquet behind the toss and it looks something like this.
So this works with
all different types of backswing and basically what it guarantees you is that
you will have a more continuously moving racquet and the risk of having a hitch
in your swing where the racquet basically gets stuck is minimized. And
you can therefore create a lot more swing momentum.
Another technical aspect
that all the top WTA servers have in common is a higher toss and this
correlates to a lag serve. So what happens on a lag serve is that you most
likely will need a little bit higher toss to accommodate the longer backswing.
You could theoretically have a lag serve and have a low toss but what happens
with most players is that they don't have the quick enough body actions and
also quick enough arm to accommodate a low toss like that because the racket
would have to move pretty quickly in order to catch up with a low toss. So let
me try it out. I'm going to toss it low and lag the racket behind.
See on that serve I felt it a lot more in my arm and it just doesn't match my body and this
is also the reason why the vast majority of the greatest WTA servers of all time
do not serve like this. They have a higher toss and allow the racket to
gradually pick up speed and it can therefore accelerate the racket a lot
faster and execute the serve with more power. And you can try this out you can
toss the ball a little higher and then lag the racket behind and see what
happens and then do a comparison where you toss it lower and then accelerate
the racket faster. What I found with the vast majority of players is that when
you toss the ball lower and accelerate the racket faster you actually are
losing power. And here's the reason why you will lose power if you do that is
because it turns into a serve that's heavily dependent on a quick arm
movement and the rest of the body is really not helping out the serve and see
when you toss the ball higher now the entire body has a little bit more time
to help the arm out and now all the power sources can work in unison and you
can therefore utilize your entire body to generate power on the serve.
And it's not only that but you will also be able to pick up a little bit of
momentum from a ball that's falling. See if I toss the ball high and then I hit
the ball on its way down, there is more momentum picked up by the gravity
which brings the ball down. Let me show you. So if I toss the ball a little
bit higher see that momentum of the ball coming down helps me to generate a little bit more power.
And finally another technical element that all the
top WTA servers have in common and that is also correlated with a lag and also a
higher toss is the pinpoint stance.
So all the greatest WTA servers of all time
use the pinpoint stance with the exception of Madison Keys and here's
what happens on a pinpoint stance. You will be able to generate a little bit
more forward momentum from the back foot moving up to the front foot.
And what's important on the pinpoint stance is the timing of when that back foot pulls up
to the front foot and it helps the racket out tremendously. So what should
happen is that the back foot will pull up to the front foot when the racket
is going up into the trophy phase. So when the racket is going towards this
position right here that's when that back foot pulls up to the front foot and
now once it's set we can accelerate the serve to the max.
And here's how the lag, the higher toss and the pinpoint stance can help your
serve. See it's no coincidence that the top female servers across the board have
these three technical elements in common and it's because a WTA serve is
obviously not as strong as an ATP serve. So the females have to rely more on the
natural ways of creating power on their serves.
And the lag, the higher toss and the pinpoint stance have nothing to do with
strength. These are natural ways to get more power on the serve and the way I see
it is why not apply them to your serve. It takes absolutely no effort and you
can generate a little bit more power on your serve as a result of that.
And these technical elements are not exclusive to female players. The vast
majority of ATP serves actually has these same technical elements in common.
So here's what you can try on your next serve practice session. Number one, try to
lag the racket behind the toss arm. Basically you're gonna toss the ball
first while the racket waits below the toss
arm. Looking something like that. Number two, try to toss the ball a little bit
higher. Now this will take some adjustments it has to match your
particular style but basically you want to hit the ball when it's on its way
down looking something like this.
And now thirdly, try the pinpoint stance.
Basically as the racket is going up into the trophy phase you're gonna start
thinking about pulling the back foot up to the front foot looking something like this.
Now if you put all these three things together you might get a few
miles an hour extra on your serve.