Hi guys Nick here from Intuitive Tennis. Today I'm going to show you how to hit a flat serve.
Let's start off with the grip. On the flat serve so the grip is going
to be a continental grip with our base knuckle on bevel number two. However one
of the greatest servers of all time Boris Becker had a slight forehand grip
on his first serve somewhere between the Eastern forehand grip and the
Continental forehand grip somewhere on this on this edge and this is how Becker
would hold the racket he would then switch over to a continental grip on the
second serve but he felt that you can get more power with a slight forehand
grip. Another player that did it the same way it was Patrick Rafter and there's
currently a top hundred player named Peter Gojowczyk who also has a slight
forehand grip. So if you happen to be slightly over towards the forehand side
that is not a deal-breaker for the flat serve
The flat serve is going to be the first serve a beginner will learn. As
a beginner you don't have to worry about kick serve the slice serves or even as
an intermediate player you might not necessarily have to worry about those
serves because you have to develop all the technical and fundamental elements
of the serve first and that's going to be the easiest to do on a flat serve. A
flat serve is very simple to perform what you have to worry about is the
swing path of the racket so from the trophy position we're going to try to
drop the racket down and come up to the ball and then we're going to simply
continue with the racket towards the target and then once we've reached this
point and we can swing across the body this way and to accommodate this swing
path and we're going to turn the upper body towards the target as well so it
looks something like this from a trophy position straight up and then towards
the target like that. This is a very simple flat serve that a beginner can perform
On the advanced level and we already learned all the fundamentals and we have
a good solid technical foundation of the serve and now we have to really worry
about the toss and the toss should be anywhere between 12 o'clock or even
slightly over to one o'clock what I don't want to see on a flat serve is a
toss that goes at too far to the left to 11 o'clock for right-handers and
because it's going to put our body in a very awkward position because we have
this rotation here we're gonna have to reach over to the left and I'll lose
balance even doing it like this so to keep our balance we must throw the ball
between 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock.
The upper body rotation is the most important technical aspect of the flat
serve and we must always try to accommodate our swing path and not try
to inhibit it and so I'm going to show you first the upper body rotation on a
very slow serve like this so I rotate my upper body to accommodate this swing
path which is going down and towards the destination of the ball if I don't
rotate and I try to hit the same swing path and look what's going to happen
it looks like my body is fighting my arm and I don't accommodate the swing path
and I'm overusing my arm therefore and I feel a lot of strain in my shoulder and
so to be able to have a nice easy effortless swing path we have to rotate
the right shoulder towards the target on the flat serve.
There are two ways to perform the flat serve one way would be to swing down and
have before arm go below the level of the elbow like this and Pete Sampras was
famous for doing this and Ivo Karlovic is another player who has this
this type of action and what this serve allows you to do there's a lot more
downforce being generated and also the ball and will actually produce a more
spin as it goes to the other side so let me try one of these basically we're
gonna bend my forearm down after contact
And that is a a pretty powerful feeling as you snap down onto the ball and you
generate a lot of power this way another way to perform the flat side would be to
keep the arm and somewhat more straight as we go towards the target and there's
not so much bending going on and it's more of a straight arm action and then
the bend starts somewhere around here so let me try one of these like that
Both of these flat serve techniques are great the Pete Sampras style with the
forearm going down in the elbow staying up will give you a little different
trajectory the ball will go a little bit shorter in the box which is actually
great if you have good placement you can get aces much easier this way however
there could be a tendency for net errors and if that's the case then you can keep
the arm maybe a little bit more straight after contact and you get a little bit
of a longer trajectory and you can reduce some of those net errors and you
can have a hybrid serve where you go just maybe slightly down after contact
like this and this could work very well Andy Murray is a player who has at this
type of contact with a slight bending of the arm and then a finish here
Does the flat serve have spin yes it does but it's not the type of spin that
you're thinking of where the ball will kick to the side after it bounces and
the ball will rather spin and this way and we have to remember that most
players will hit the ball on its way down so they'll make contact when the
ball is dropping so now when we make contact in a downward fashion after the
ball has dropped a little bit this ball will spin so I'm going to hit a ball
towards the camera and you take a look in slow motion if you can see the ball
spinning in the air.
So you can see there that even though I hit the ball flat I hit it down my
shoulders were rotated and my my arm went down after contact and the ball
still had some spin on it and the king of hitting down on serves as Pete
Sampras and he had a lot of rotation even on his first serves. So this can
help you generate a little bit more height as the ball bounces on the other
side
Thank you guys for watching this video hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a
comment in the section below I will be happy to respond. Hit that like button
and subscribe if you haven't already. I'll see you next time