Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. Today I'm going to show you three
different ways to toss the ball on the serve. One way to bring the toss arm up
into the release is the parallel toss arm technique and this technique is used
by Ivo Karlovic, Roger Federer and Pete Sampras and basically what it is is if
we bring both the racket arm and the tossing arm back together and we end up
somewhere around here. Now as the toss arm goes up into the
release it travels parallel to the baseline and this is great for several
reasons. Number one reason is disguise as I throw this ball up parallel to the
baseline the ball will arc in this the case is right-to-left and usually is
tossed in a way where it's simply going to drop in right around a 12 o'clock and
maybe a little bit further towards 11 o'clock on kick serves but most good
players have a way to hit all serves from the 12 o'clock position. So as the ball
is arcing into this slot right here it's a big disguise because there's no
difference between the slice serve, the kick serve all the flat serve, because
the ball always travels right-to-left and therefore it's impossible to read by
the opponent. Another advantage of this tossing action is as we bring the arm up
parallel to the baseline we immediately get a shoulder turn or a coil. See it's
very difficult to not turn as my arm goes up into this direction. Naturally as
we bring this arm up we already start getting a little bit of a of a coil to
make this toss possible in the first place. So as we go up here we
immediately get a shoulder turn like this and this is a big advantage. I do
not recommend this technique to recreational players as it's difficult
to throw the ball inside the court what needs to happen at the very end stage of
the toss is that the arm has to go slightly forward like this to be able to
bring the ball inside the court the recreational players will have a hard
time getting the ball to go forward in addition to that many recreational
players we also simply throw the ball too far to the left this way
and they have to develop great feel to be able to bring the ball to curve into
the 12 o'clock position. I almost compare it to shooting a a skyhook in basketball
We don't want this ball to continue traveling all the way over to the left
but we want to simply to curve and then fall right down into the 12
o'clock position like this and this can be a big challenge for recreational
players. However on the advanced level if you can perform this type of toss it can
be a big advantage because of its disguise and because of its immediate
shoulder turn.
Another way to toss the ball is the diagonal tossing technique and this
happens to be the most popular toss technique worldwide. This is used by a
Milos Raonic, Goran Ivanisevic, Serena Williams, John Isner and many many
others and it looks something like this. The tossing arm would basically go along
the front foot towards the right net post on right-handers and it will go
into the court this way. That's the diagonal toss technique. The
advantage of this technique is it can still provide you with some disguise as
the arm is going to the side you can still get some curve into your toss with
relative ease and also if you prefer to hit the serve a little bit more towards
the right let's say around one o'clock. It's very easy to get the ball to end up
on the right side of the body. In addition to that it's also fairly easy
to throw the ball in front because the arm is going into the court right away
and if we get let it go at the right time it guarantees us to have the toss
go inside the court.
And the final way to toss the ball is the straight forward tossing technique
and this toss technique is used by some of the greatest female servers of all
time. Sabine Lisicki and Karolina Pliskova both to use this technique and even some
men such as Robin Soderling and Jérémy Chardy use the straight forward toss
technique and it looks something like this basically the tossing arm will not
go to the side it will go straight in this way like this and this makes it
almost impossible to throw the ball backwards and the only way you can throw
it backwards in this position if you end up with a bent arm like this but if you
keep the arm somewhat straight it makes it almost impossible to throw it behind
The one disadvantage of this tossing technique is the poor disguise so if I
throw the ball straight in like this that is going to be absolutely no
curvature on this toss it's gonna be a straight up-and-down toss and now if I
wanted to change the direction of this toss and let's say I'm gonna throw it a
little bit to the left on a kick serve. It's very easy to pick up because my arm
will go towards the left. If I want to throw it towards the right maybe for a
slice and my arm is gonna go slightly towards the right so the opponent can
pick this up very easily, however I want to add that on the professional level
many of the players can perform all serves from the same position so this
might not be that much of a disadvantage on a professional tour.
Another disadvantage of this serve is that and if you want to coil on your serve you have
to do it in a later stage of the serve and this might be tricky for some
players. So if I throw a ball in here it's very difficult for me to turn this
way okay so I will have to do that at a later stage in the serve so I'd have to
toss it and then coil later and this might be a problem
with timing there might not be enough time for some players to turn and coil
at a later stage. So it's much easier for the diagonal style and the parallel
style because when we throw the ball this way we immediately get a little bit
of a shoulder turn we're here we have to keep the upper body
the sideways and the coil I must come later.
Thank you guys for watching this video. I hope you enjoyed it. Please hit that like
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I'll be happy to answer. I'll see you next time.