I don't think the gentleman on the other
side of the screen needs any introduction, it's Tony from into typical.
Welcome, Tony.
I invited Tony to join me today to talk about the pickleball serve.
There are so many videos that we decided to put together the definitive guide,
no matter what level you happen to be to help you with your serve.
C.J., pleasure always to see you and work with you in any way we can.
I'll tell you the sort of thing you're absolutely right.
If we can just put them all in one place and explain to folks, you know,
kind of the incremental approach they can take to the serving, you know,
start with this or move on to this or once you're ready, move on to this serve.
And then if you want to get crazy,
we'll throw a couple of extra years and therefore, perfect.
So we've got it here for you.
We're starting with those fundamentals
and then we're going to make it incrementally more difficult.
And Tony has a couple of superduper serves for you at the end.
So make sure you stick around.
All right, T.J., I'm going to head down to the court and get it done.
We'll see you out there, Tony.
Let's start with the basics, sir.
You want a serve that you can place in the center of the box each and every time?
Here are a couple of fundamentals to help you to do that.
This should go without saying.
But the very first thing we need to do is to pick a target.
I ask people all the time what we aiming at is their answer.
Just generally it's like I'm aiming at the box.
I want you to pick a specific target in just a service box that you're aiming
to them then programs or three to make a motion in the direction of your task.
Number two, the contact between the box
and the paddles needs to happen in front of the.
Number three, the panel needs to travel in the direction that you want it to go.
Tony does a fantastic job of explaining
this in his call to the office to make sure that you check it out.
But here's what it looks like.
Number four, make sure that you watch the polls all the way to the final,
one of the things that I like to do is to gaze at the holes and make sure
that I'm watching the contact between the ball and the.
Once you've mastered the basics,
serve what should be the next serve to add to your arsenal?
It's the deep, sir.
The reason you want to hit a deep serve is
it pushes the returner at or behind the baseline and doesn't
allow them to use forward momentum for the return.
Many times that will result in a short return.
The shorter the return,
the more options and the easier it is for the serving team to hit the third shot.
There are two different types of deep serve's that you'll want to consider.
Hey, Tony, want to help us out with that power, sir?
T.J., those of fundamentals are certainly critical.
If you want to have a good serve like T.J.
saying, you've got to have the fundamentals down.
Consistent, repeatable, sir. Superimportant.
But if you want to add a little bit of power to your serve right now,
I want to show you how to add a little extra power to your serve.
We're going to start with the fundamentals that T.J. just talked about.
I'm sure you had a little more power to your serve.
If you're not ready for power, don't edit your game yet.
All these steps are incremental.
Make sure you're adding them to your game as you're ready for them.
The main thing I'm trying to add to my serve to increase the power is
to push off my legs and engage my core in a basic serve.
I'm just basically standing there and serving like this.
The more that I can rotate into the serve, the more that I can push off my back leg,
engage my core and push to the serve the more power I'll generate.
The other thing that'll add some power to my serve is my wrist.
So being able to lay my respect and then as I come through, basically kind of snap
at a little bit, basically add some more power to myself.
I make sure what it looks like when I add
a little more power through my core and my wrist.
Surete again.
One thing you'll notice about the power
surge is that they have to be lower, they have to be closer to the net.
This is the tennis that I haven't adjusted downwards.
It's a thirty six inch net and I'm hitting it pretty close to the net.
So you're going to probably be three,
three or four inches above the net when you hit these curves.
Obviously just geometry.
The harder I hit at the lower I have to hit in order for her to stay in.
If I hit that ball at a normal say, like a 30 degree trajectory, the ball sell that.
I mentioned there were two serves that you
could hit, the other one is the lobster, and I like this serve for several reasons.
The first one is that to me, it's easier to hit this serve deep, consistently.
It does exactly what we want to do it serve to do.
It pushes our opponent behind the baseline
and then, of course, keeps them from using that momentum to come forward.
It does a couple of other things.
It is so different.
Most people don't use that.
So the returners not used to seeing this type of serve.
That high arc on the serve gives them time to think about it,
and sometimes it gives them time to change their minds, which can be disastrous.
In addition, because of that high arc,
it creates a higher bounce and a lot of people are used to going low to hit
the return of serve, but they're not necessarily comfortable with going high.
Also, those things can elicit that short
return that's going to make the serving team's third shot easier.
A couple other things I like about it,
because there's not much speed on this serve.
A great serve to use with somebody who's a power player.
If you serve a power serve to a power
player, they take the power from that serve and amplify it back to you
in the return, because this lobster doesn't have
that speed, they're left to generate their own power.
Another situation that I like to use this
serve in is if there is something behind the players.
So perhaps there is a tennis net or some
kind of netting separating the court when there's something behind that player
and you hit this sort of deep and soft to the bone box with that high bounce,
they may be thinking about that net behind them and the size of their swing.
They might even have to take a smaller swing because of it.
And often that can cause in error.
Hey, Tony, by my count,
we should have at least three serves in the arsenal right now.
What else you got for us?
Another variation you can add to the power source.
Had a little bit taps into it.
Basically, we can do is we're going to drive through that ball.
But instead of coming directly through it, we're going to basically come through it
and and come up a little bit as we come out of it.
That'll help the ball rotate over and over
like this topspin wise and drop it in with some tossin.
Let me show you this looks like
so you can see that as I hit this ball, it basically starts to to roll.
And you see on the other angle,
you're able to see how it rolls over lands and pops off the court.
And that's what you want with the topspin serve.
Let me show you one more variation
on Thompson, sir, and the other Thompson served from before.
You could see from the other angle that I'm kidding across my body like this.
So I'm basically coming through.
And then as I hit, I come up the stacks.
I'm going to show you the Thompson server
where I hit it, and then my palate comes up on the same side.
It generally tends to comb the ball
a little bit more, gives it a tad bit more spin.
It gives a little loop.
And but it's not as powerful as let me show you what that looks like.
Give you another one.
So generates a little more spin,
loops it in there, pops off the court nicely, just has less power.
All right, T.J., those stories I wanted to share with everybody,
we had the power serving there where you basically use your core drive through
that ball, you can bring some wrist into it to some wrist action,
keep that ball low over the net, generate some power on it.
And the other one is topspin serve,
where basically it's a similar motion, except that as you come through the ball,
you're going to lift up a little more to generate the spin.
And if you want to really go crazy
with this placement, then you're just going to flick it up on the same side.
T.J., I know we don't have time to go through the entire cut serving in this
video, but I want to show to show them what it looks like real quick.
And then if they want to learn more about it, they can watch the video we did
on into Pickle about the cut surf show, it looks like.
All right. So here's a cut, sir,
and you'll see it from the other angle that ball curves side spin curves into.
For me, it curves right to left or right handed curve, left or right.
It's kind of a. .
Sharp add arsenal if you're ready for it.
C.J., thanks for having me on the video with you.
Was a lot of fun doing this.
If you want to learn more about that, cut surf the videos over here.
If you're not quite ready for that cut surf, check out this playlist to help you
to develop the basics, because together we can train Smart Lippold and age well.