here we go two come on three here we go four come on five go go oh
that's tough right there put everything away come on put everything away
put away shots come good come on come on come on something don't let him go
come on five more one one two close three four come on five come on five five
five more because you let that one go five more because you let it go punishment two five
more because you're on top of that because you let it go now you got ten two don't let balls go three
come on four five come on six come on safin seven eight nine come ten all right all right
you did it remember don't let those balls go you have to try to get everything
you like my one-hander
very nice safin good one thing about that scenario that we want to keep in mind while i
i'm not opposed to you letting the ball bounce and ripping a forehand for a winner
you can get into trouble sometimes you play really good defenders right so you might be better off
taking that in the air i was trying to i didn't get there quickly you didn't get that quick
enough yeah so when you see that ball floating be a little bit more explosive on the ball
and good defenders are gonna be left chanceless having said that if you feel like it's too much of
a risk do what you did there let it bounce and rip the forehand i'm gonna call the shot now forehand
forehand forehand
forehand
backhand
forehand backhand
i think you're moving better it you know what like with footwork
it takes a while for the footwork to sink in it takes a while to like
to start showing but i think it's been how long two months now three months two months
so i think it's it's starting to show a little bit it's starting to show here we go come on
let's backhand come on forehand okay back to the middle come again good come on back again
middle again good middle again get up so what's going on with your serve safin i thought you
should take a look at it because i feel like it's been getting better but it still lets me down in a
key moment okay go ahead when i serve i'll tell you when i served for the first set again
i had no double fault before that yeah yes there were five doubles
okay one on set point and the rest were just on let me see
that looks better you're loading better though
you're better i'll go ahead and slice it out wide
okay imagine coming around the ball a little more
there you go go ahead and flatten it out again
okay good now go the other way go to the ad side
okay
it's looking better man it's definitely looking better the
serve now go ahead and show me a second serve
throw it more to the left yeah even more just a little bit more to the left
a little bit more safin because what the problem is that you won't get enough lift
on the ball if you throw it too far to the right exaggerate throw it a little bit more to the left
like that okay you caught that a little thin but do it again
okay another thing i would like you to try to do is get your body underneath the ball a little more
so lean on it strong on that kicker just throw it inside the court lean on it hard
the way you finish on your flat serve finish like that on your kick serve as well
let's see a strong finish that toss is like one o'clock yeah so so what happens
when you do a toss that's like at one for your kick serve you'll automatically
lose height right right because you're gonna end up with a slice which is a lower trajectory yeah
so if you miss into the net the two things you want to remind yourself of is there generally
throw it higher that's the first thought second thought should be more to the left and you can
feel that on the kicker it has to be at least at 12 o'clock okay okay more you see what i mean
hold on to the ball a little bit longer hold it longer release it just a tad later
are you slowing down your second serve when you get tight
you're hitting at full speed yeah okay okay
better safin better keep going
what do you think that toss was too far over to the right yeah exactly so you can feel that
make sure you remind yourself at least 12 okay
yeah i want you to try something here go ahead and um and put your racket up into the trophy phase go
ahead and i'll go for lean forward lean forward lean lean you know throw your hip in there like
you normally do lean i'll hold you lean like like lean into the court more yeah more come on
lean i'll hold you there you go you feel that yeah yeah okay now get your head up as you're
looking up to the ball there you go like that all right so when you hit it when you do a kick
kick serve i want you to imagine leaning and getting right underneath that ball
stefan edberg style that's what i call the stefan edberg kick technique
this will help you also with height not only will it go higher over the net but also the bounce will
be higher okay so you're going to throw it like you always do here and you're going to get your
body underneath the ball let me show you again watch throw it here put your body underneath
the ball like that so the contact should be right above your head okay okay all right you try it out
what do you think about that a lot of action right how's that feeling do you feel like you
got under under the ball your body you can do even more i can do it let me see it come on
okay one thing in general the more you throw it in front the shallower the trajectory will be so when
it comes to your kicker yes i want you to throw it in front but not too far it's not like here
more like here okay a little bit closer to the baseline still in front but closer to the baseline
too far in front and look where that ball went i'm missing to the net did it feel like it was
too far in front i thought it was too much to the right that could be two i'm just talking
about this direction now i couldn't see how far the right it was because i'm standing here
but it was definitely too far in front yeah there's no doubt about that so that's another
thing you have to think about when you start missing second serves into the net double faults
that could be a reason too so three reasons not enough height on the toss in general
it's a possibility toss is going to the right that's a possibility toss that's going too far
in front is another possibility why you're dumping second serves in the net are you missing them long
ever the double faults there you go yeah all right so we don't have to even worry about long those
are the three things all right i saw a couple of times where you threw it too far to the right and
mr net yeah i saw a couple times where you threw it too far in front that you missed into the net
remember this when you play a match write it down on a piece of paper in your bag that if you end
up double faulting that you can go and change over look in your look in your bag and your
notebook or whatever you see what it says there says make sure you throw the ball the right way
make sure what the causes of errors are on the second serve and you can fix it immediately
way too far in front
yes sir you see the height on that one that ball has very little chance of going into the net
and it's not only that but as the ball goes higher than that it's also going to bounce higher
right because that's what you want you want the ball to be lively and go up a little higher
and the you want to don't want the ball to be shallow on a kickserve because the kick
serve's too slow for that type of bounce it's fine on a flat or on a slice not on the kick
what do you think is a little too high
too don't know about that waiting in this position maybe i don't know i didn't see that that's
a whole nother thing i did think it was a little too in front far in front though let's do it again
that one i liked more i like it that i like more all right i'm going to do a test with
you now safin i'm going to give you 10 balls and we'll see how many out of 10 you get in i'm
going to put a little bit of pressure on you okay i expect you to get 9 out of 10. nine out of 10
is acceptable in terms of second serve percentages means ninety percent second serves
nine out of ten meaning one double fault per set acceptable two double faults per set is still okay
if you're making three double faults a set that's like if you play three sets that's nine double
faults that's way too much okay now that i'm going to say that but that's for you because you don't
go for your second serve right you don't right you always do a kicker on the second yeah if you
were someone who likes to occasionally hit a first serve as a second serve five 0 40 okay you're not
that type of player cause i will sometimes do two first serves when you do that then you're going
to have tons of double faults yeah and that's okay because that's a different intention all
right here's 10 balls let's see what happens come on oh we're not going to line up on the baseline
stay again i'll hold him on the racket because i'm i'm your ball boy right now second only kick
general direction like middle of the box towards the backhand that's usually where you should aim
one out of one it's a dead ball you made it anyway
two out of two
two out of three
three out of four
four out of five
that wasn't a kick but i'll give it to you anyway it was more of a slice five out of six
it was good six out of seven
seven out of eight
eight out of nine
okay you know it's a little bit worrisome that both of the mistakes came with a frame
does that happen sometimes you frame your second serve not that often all right sometimes what i
find on the on a kick serve if there's a little too much rotation on a kicker it makes the contact
more difficult because if you're turning too early you kind of lose sight of the ball over here yeah
you know what i mean yeah so what needs to happen on a kick serve you need to be turned much longer
and the rotation is going to set in way after you have made contact with the ball right so it's more
of a sideways position and depending on the amount of coil you have you do want to look back a little
bit so if you're tossing the ball up you look you look this way because the ball is traveling
into here right okay so you do need to look in this direction if you turn too early this way
you can have something i do sometimes yeah you lose sight of the ball prior to contact
and you can frame it you need to watch that ball as long as you possibly can whether you actually
see it at contact or not that's irrelevant you gotta watch it as long as you possibly can
and the way that needs to happen in the kick serve is by looking more in this direction
a little bit more to the right so let's do 10 more and you pay attention to that okay
with my dad the last practice tell me match point and i miss it okay that's normal it's a little
bit of pressure that's normal you gotta take a deep breath when it's pressure take a deep breath
take your time and you'll be fine okay come on ten more solid one one
one two
two three
three four
four five
interesting location it's all right five six
five seven
six eight
seven nine
and eight out of ten again we got eighty percent look i still don't think you have a huge problem
on your serve no frames this time that was okay net errors though you know now how to fix it what
i want you to do and we'll do one more round i want you to get nine okay you got to get nine
but what you have to understand is learning from the mistakes so when you make a net
error because i'm not doing any coaching i'm not letting you deal with this by yourself what did
you think when you made that net error did you feel like my toss was no but did you make any
corrections in your head did you i was trying to keep the toss more behind this one okay so you made
corrections i was trying to after you missed you told yourself what did you tell yourself i told
myself toss the two in front keep it okay that's what that's all i'm asking you to do because i'm
nobody's going to be out there for you on the court you have to problem solve this way
right all right let's do one more round this time we get nine out of ten come on
one one
two two
three three
four four
five five six out of six
seven out of seven
eight out of eight
eight out of nine come on you gotta make this one safin if you don't make this
one you'll owe me a 45 second sprint come on it's extra pressure here we go
and nine out of ten you made it oh my i'm so stressful in here but you made it right i know it
was in okay not bad so you got eight on eight out of ten eight out of ten nine out of ten it's not
that bad not bad there is some issues there though yeah it's not like 100 perfect so you do have to
spend time working on the kicker and uh problem solve is the most important thing
and you know what to do you got to slide that toss to at least 12 if it goes to 11
30 you're still good avoid the one o'clock toss make sure it's not um too far in front
and just a little bit in front and then get your body underneath it this will help you
also we're working on the first serve will you do such a great job of like finishing strong
do that same thing on your on your kick serve actually that last set uh you did really well in
that last set you were serving with a great rhythm then there was that one serve you threw it a
little bit too far to the right and that destroyed the rhythm and then you missed one after that yeah
and then you barely made that last one it was way too close to the line so that can happen so
you can lose your rhythm a little bit sometimes but not bad okay you're doing good all right