Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. In today's video we're going to cover the
kick serve.
The kick serve is one of the more difficult shots to perform in tennis and
it should always be learned after we have developed a solid flat serve with
all the technical fundamental aspects of the serving action. The primary objective
of a kick serve is safety and not power. Yes there's some players on the
extremely high level such as Dominik Thiem or John Isner who can hit kick
serves with power close to 130 miles an hour but even at the tour level and most
players the second serve is used for safety and the biggest advantage of of a
kick serve on the second serve is that we number one that we get a higher net
clearance as the ball clears the net and second of all we get the ball to land
shorter in the box and these are fantastic factors when it comes to
safety. We can keep the double faults very close to zero if we execute the
kick serve properly and on the other hand the recreational players who do not
possess a kick serve will most of the time at tap their serves in. Something
like this. They will basically have all the technical elements of a first
serve as just in a slowed down version and they want to achieve safety with
this. So this is a very weak serve that's very predictable for the returner
and if we try to speed this type of serve up double faults are gonna
increase drastically. So the advantage of learning a proper kick serve is that we
can actually hit the second serve with a lot more racket head speed and therefore
achieve safety and we can make life more difficult for the returner.
Something like this.
The kick serve can be performed with either a
continental grip or even a slight backhand grip. I find that with a slight
backhand grip the racket face is slightly more closed in this position
and this can give the ball a little bit more cut as we come across it. What's
very important that you do not serve with a forehand grip and this makes it
absolutely impossible to put any type of kick on the ball
because the racket face will be slightly open at contact even the players that
use a slight forehand grip on their first serves such as Boris Becker and
Patrick Rafter that would then switch their grip on their second serves and when
they went for a kick serve and because it makes it absolutely impossible to put
any type of topspin on the ball if the hand is on the forehand side of the grip.
The toss is one of the most important elements of the serve. Before we
start talking about the toss I'm going to first clarify what I refer to as a
right, left, forward and backward because some players are confused when
it comes to this. And we are in a sideways position on the serve so some
players call this way backwards and they call this way forward and I think this
is very confusing and I always refer to forward is towards the target so this is
forward this is backward and this would be right and this would be left so when
it comes to the kick serve I like the toss to be at least in the middle
meaning at 12:00 o'clock right here. This will give our racket head the chance to
be slightly pointed to the left at contact if the ball goes to the right
for right-handers somewhere around one o'clock then naturally the racket will
have a tendency to straighten out with the tip of the racket pointing straight
to the sky and it's very unnatural to turn the racket over to the left this
way. Some players who are very flexible and have a big arc in their serve they
can even throw the ball a little bit further towards 11 o'clock. So that's
something you can try out and have the ball a little bit more over to the
eleven o'clock side and you will find that the angle of the racket face will
be even more advantageous if we throw the ball at 11 o'clock. A very important
part of the toss on the kick serve is how much in front do we toss the ball. So
the professional players will throw the ball in front even on their on their
second serves on their kick serves. Players like Dominic Thiem and Roger Federer and
some of the best kick serves in the game and they throw the ball inside the
baseline. However if you're a recreational player who doesn't use his
or her body on the second serve and many recreational players have a stationary
second serve then you must not throw the ball inside the court because
you will end up with something that I call a jackknife serve. So if you're not
using your body when performing a second serve and you throw the ball in front
and then you will have this action where the upper body that goes down and the
legs are behind the court and we have this jackknife effect. So if you do not
use your your body on the second serve then you must throw the ball a little
bit further behind maybe right around the baseline or maybe even a little bit
further. So let me perform one of these stationary second serves.
I didn't lean in and I was very comfortable with the ball being right
behind me. For the players who do use their bodies who do lean forward
slightly even on their kick serves then you must throw the ball inside the court
something like this
Because I leaned forward if I would have thrown the ball on the
baseline would have made contact way too far behind my head and this would
have resulted in the ball going long and so therefore if I'm leaning forward I
must throw the ball inside the court on all serves whether it's flat, slice or
kick
the body position on the flat serve the slice serve and the kick serve is going
to be identical until the trophy position. So whatever serve we are
attempting and nothing is going to change until we reach this position
Once we're in the trophy position and the racket is going to drop and we're
simply not going to allow our body to rotate we have to stay sideways on the
kick serve. Unlike the flat serve where we start the
upward motion and the rotation at the same time and we come forward. The kick
serve is the exact opposite. To accommodate a swing path that goes from
left to right we must accommodate this swing path by staying sideways. If you
try to rotate and have the racket go to the side it becomes more difficult it's
not impossible and you can still go to the right and but it's more difficult
than you eventually run out of space if you stay sideways after the racket
drop, now you have a lot larger area to work with and the racket can go
further to the right as we execute the kick serve
So the swing path is very much related to the body's position. So when we are in
a sideways position at contact and you see that the racket will go to the right
on right-handers and that is what creates the spin because we threw the
ball at at least 12 o'clock or even at 11 o'clock when we stayed sideways you
see that the tip of our racket is pointed and it's slightly to the left
and now as we go towards the right you can see that the racket goes up first
before it goes down and this this little action is what creates the topspin and
if we do this in a very violent fashion because of this angle we'll get the ball
to rotate this way. It's not a true topspin like we have on the ground
strokes where the racket is this way we cannot achieve at this position on the
kick serve and we will not be able to get enough height over the net.
So to create more height and more net clearance we must have this angle
and therefore because of this angle the ball will rotate a little bit more to
the right like this on right-handers and not up and down like it is on the ground
strokes and therefore because of this rotation the ball with them bounce and
if we hit it with a lot of power it will then jump to the right.
There are two ways to execute the kick serve the Federer Way and the Dominik
Thiem way. So the Federer a way is basically with a straight arm after
contact. So Federer will not allow his arm to bend he will keep it straight all
the way until the arm comes around the body and then somewhere around here he
goes back into a bend. Most players however, including Dominik Thiem who maybe
has the best kick serve on tour will go into a bent right after contact and it
looks something like this. You make contact here and then the arm will
immediately go into a bend like this sometimes with full pronation like this
and sometimes without there are some players who will serve without full
pronation and the arm will go into a bend this way. Both of these techniques the
straight arm and the bent arm work great. You have to try out and see which one
you perform more naturally. Me personally I'm a lot more comfortable with having
my arm go into a bend after contact so you must see what works
best for you.
Are we hitting up on the kick serve or are we hitting down on the kick serve?
We're definitely swinging up there's no argument about that. So when the racket
starts to go up once it has dropped it starts to go up. We are swinging up now.
At some point the arm is going to be fully extended you don't want to have a
bend in your arm. So the arm is going to be fully extended and the tip of the
rack is going to be pointed slightly towards the left so now from here the
arm will actually and not go completely to the side it will actually go forward
and down like this and very similar to the flat serve. It's a big misconception
and that the arm travels parallel to the baseline. You can see that even on the
greatest kick servers on tour Roger Federer and Dominic Thiem. You will see
that the arm is almost going at a diagonal it goes down and forward this
way and the reason for that is you can try this out if you hit the ball and
have the arm go parallel to the baseline you will get topspin but you will
hit the ball very thin. There's going to be very little forward momentum applied
to the ball and so if you have more of a diagonal swing path and will be swinging
up and then hitting it down and forward I always like taking something on the
side of the court as a target maybe a pole or light pole or something like
that and more of a diagonal angle and so we still get a little bit more of a
forward momentum and we hit the ball a lot fuller and we get a little
definitely more power this way
If we take a look at the racket head on the kick serve it is true that the
racket head will go up before it starts going down and that is indeed what
creates the higher net clearance and what can create the ball kicking to the
right but the hand action in the body action is a downward momentum. So
just because we are in this position this doesn't mean that the hand is going
to continue going up and and we're creating this movement here but
continuing to go up once we make contact here we start to go
down but you can see that the racket goes up and the arm starts to go down.
Look again the contact is made here the racket goes up but if you look at my arm
the arm starts to go down if you take a look at my hand you can see that the
hand continues to go up because the hand is slightly bent this way so the hand
will follow the racket this way but the all will start to go down and it is very
important to remember that all serves will have a downward trajectory if we
look at the first serve and let's say a flat serve. The ball will have a downward
trajectory and that is achieved and by hitting down on the ball. If you look at
the second serve a kick serve the ball will also always have a downward
trajectory and the difference is that it will stay a little bit higher at first
and then it will dip and that is what creates the higher net clearance. So any
shot in tennis that has a downward trajectory is hit down. On the other hand
any shot in tennis that has a upward trajectory like a topspin forehand or a
topspin backhand is hit up. So the ball will not lie the ball will tell us how a
stroke is performed.
The finish on a kick serve is something that's very interesting. It's gonna be a
longer finish and that has to do with our body sideways position at contact
and so let's just take a first serve as an example so on the first serve flat
serve I'm going to have my upper body rotate and so as my racket starts going
forward towards the target you can see that the finish and this area is going
to be relatively short. I'm gonna have my racket come around here my upper body
will bend maybe to about right here. So if you take a kick serve as an example
you can see that because I'm sideways and the racket will be slightly to the
left at contact and now as I go down my body will continue to stay sideways and
the racket will continue going this way and once the racket starts maybe the
tip of the racket point to the ground and then I can start opening up and
finishing like this and you see that the best players will have a very low finish
on the second serve with the upper bodies almost parallel to the ground if
you look at Federer look at Djokovic. The upper body is almost parallel to the
ground on the kick serve and it's more straight up on the flat serve.
Is it easy to make the ball kick to the right? No it's not easy it's very
difficult and even most of the professional players do not make the
ball kick to the right. The best kick servers of all time they do they have so
much rotation on the ball and their ball does indeed make a kick to the right.
Most players even at the high level, however do not make the ball kick to the
right and it has to do with the geometry of the court and it is something I like
to call the fake kick and the way it works is the following way. The further
away from the middle I stand if I go way over here and I simply execute a very
soft let's say 30 mile an hour kick serve look what happens to the ball you
see that looks like a kick serve but it's not it just has to do with the
angle of the court. So if I'm serving from this angle and I'm aiming towards a
corner my ball will regardless will bounce to the right just because of the
geometry of the court. So even if I hit a flat serve from here it will still jump
to the right just because of the angle I'm standing on. The true test to see if
we can perform a kick serve is to stand on the deuce side
Thank you guys for watching this video. Hope you enjoyed it. Please subscribe if
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section below I will be happy to respond. I'll see you next time