Hi guys in today's video i'm going to show you how I hold serve.
Now this might not necessarily be the way you should hold serve. See what I do
on my serve is I go for the ace or the service
winner on almost every serve and this doesn't negatively influence my
first serve percentage. See my serve is my best shot and this is
what i base my game on. Now you might be a different
type of player and maybe you shouldn't try to adapt
my style and you should go more for placing the first serve
and getting a higher first serve percentage. Also if you have some
technical deficiencies on your first serve you don't want to go
for the ace or the service winner every time because what's gonna happen
is your first serve percentage is gonna suffer
tremendously. And guys it also depends who you
are serving against if you know your opponent you got to look for
strengths and weaknesses on the return for example if they have a really good
backhand return or really good forehand return you have
to take that into consideration or if they maybe have
bad reflexes you can maybe consider doing a body serve
in my case i'm playing one of my old students who i used to coach who just
came back from college she played for clemson so you
can see it's serious i'm gonna have to serve well
i got my towel and i got my old racquet so this is no joke.
so it's not a bad thing to start off with an ace and that was a good serve so
now i'm going to continue along this way in the first service game. I'm
going to put a lot of slice on the serve that's going to help me get into a
rhythm by getting a lot of first serves in
but i'm still going for the ace i'm only going to do it this time
with a slice down the T.
okay guys so i got two first serves in this is great
and actually now i'm going to switch it up a little bit i'm going to actually
try to go down the t and i'm going to flatten it out and let's see what
happens
in my case the T is my lowest percentage serve just the one i missed the most and
i only do it when i'm way up in the game so i can afford to miss it there i'm up
30 love and when it comes to my second serve i
always go for absolute control i do not want to double fault
so i'm going to put a lot of kick on this one and go very central
in the box.
all right so there i missed my forehand just uh very early on
some rhythm issues and i was 30 15. now okay this is very important
that i win this point because there's a big difference between 40 15
and 30 all so now i'm gonna go to for my favorite serve
which is the out wide one i have pretty big confidence in this serve
and i'm going to use this one in the important points.
all right guys that was great i got that served in i got the point of a 40 15
and now i'm actually going to do a body serve why not
i'm going to see how his reflexes are and I'm up 40 15 i can afford to change
things up a little bit
so guys that service game was pretty good i only missed one first serve and
it was at 30 love i could afford to miss that one i got
the rest of my first serves in i got a very comfortable hold and i'm
going to try to get a break
okay guys he held to 30. it's important how the other guy holds now if you say
if you have a lot of break points and you don't get to convert the break this
can influence your next service game in a negative way
and let me try to now continue along the same path
i'm going to go out wide to his forehand i still feel like he hasn't
gotten his rhythm i can still draw some mistakes from his
forehand return
all right guys there's something i don't like especially at 43 years old the long
rallies but i got this one which is very
important that first point in a service game
is absolutely huge and it's a big difference so now up 15 love
i'm going to go again to his backhand out wide
all right so there i missed two first serves and i had to
rally and i missed that forehand but i felt pretty good about that forehand and
i'm gonna have to switch it up a little bit i can't continue going
to his forehand he's gonna get used to it i'm gonna go flat down the t on this
one
That was that was huge because and very important point i want to be up 30 15
not down 15 30. so now i feel good about my serve let me
do another one i'll out wide to the backhand this time
i'm going for the ace
okay now it's very interesting uh he got me with that deep forehand to my
backhand and i was 30 all and i'm feeling like i'm gonna surprise
him i'm gonna go wide to the forehand but i'm gonna put a little extra juice
on this one i'm going for the slice ace out wide.
come on come on huge point there humongous point and i got it
so now it's 40 30. let's see i got to think about this one so this is why it's
important that you take your time and your service games
don't rush think about what you want to do okay so i've missed a lot of service
in this one and i missed a lot of flat serves so let
me go back to the slice this time down the t
by the way i hope he can't hear where i'm going i'm pretty positive he can't
but let's hope so
all right very good very good very good that worked actually the plan worked
so guys those were a couple of my service games and the way i'm serving
doesn't necessarily apply to your game but a couple of general
tips when it comes to holding serve that can be beneficial to your game
is most importantly you want to take your time between points a lot of you
guys have a tendency to rush between the
points and when you rush a lot of times you don't make the perfect selection for
how you want to structure your service game so make sure that you
take a lot of time between the points and then before
every serve you need to have a plan whether you're going to serve flat
slice or kick and also in which direction you're going to serve
make sure that you add a lot of variety to your service game so they
stay unpredictable you don't want to have the same patterns
over and over again however there's one exception if your opponent
has a glaring weakness for example let's say your opponent has a really
bad backhand in that case there's no problem at all to continue
serving the ball to the weakness at the recreational level the biggest
problem with holding serve is the second serve a lot of recreational players do
not possess a kick serve they have a slower version of their flat first serve
and they have a tendency to just guide the ball in and then of course they're
gonna be playing a lot of defense and it's very easy to get broken that way so
guys it's hugely important that you learn proper kick
serve technique and have a great video titled how to hit a kick serve that
explains in great detail what you need to do on your technique when it comes to
the kicker so during those service games i mentioned that i usually
try to aim my second serve very central with a lot of kick but then i did this
so from time to time i will change up my second serve and i will slice it
on the ad side through the t and on the do side i will slice it
out wide and i will be very selective when i will do this
usually this will not work when i'm down in the score
or down in the match this is an act of desperation
in those circumstances and it will rarely work and don't be concerned that
your second serve is going to be predictable
or easy to return if it's directed right towards the middle of the box
in fact if you execute the second serve with kick the ball is going to have
enough rotations on it that even if your opponent attempts to
hit winners they're going to commit a lot of mistakes and when it comes to
holding serve it's very important which ball
you select and i'm sure you've seen professional players pick two balls
out of like five or six and they're doing this for a very specific reason
you always want to pick the ball that has the least amount of fuzz on it so
out of these three balls i'm probably going to put this one away
and if i take a look at these two i'm probably going to take this one for my
first serve and then put this one in my pocket for
the second serve now some of you guys might think this is ridiculous all these
balls look the same what is the difference between
serving with a ball with a little bit of fuzz on it versus a ball that has
just a tiny bit more fuzz on it and there might be some truth to that
but we as tennis players we tend to magnify these things and appear to be a
much greater difference than it is in reality however in my
opinion you want to maximize your service game and even if you can
get one extra mile an hour from your serve out of the ball why not
do it so guys i highly recommend that before every serve you select the
balls that appear to be the fastest and guys
lastly it's very important that you have a positive
mindset in your service games and also that you portray confidence if your
opponent sees you angry frustrated or with a lack
of confidence for example if you're walking around with slouched shoulders
like this and this is usually when you will get
broken so portray confidence in your service games walk
with your chest out with your shoulders up and you look like
you're in full control even when you get down in the score
let's say love 30 or even love 40. if you watch the
greatest servers in the history of the game
players such as Boris Becker Ivo Kalovic or John Isner
they very often come back from love 40 down and if you watch these guys
carefully they don't look like they're gonna get broken
they have their chest out and look like they're in full control
regardless of the score. So guys if you apply some of the tips in this video you
have a much better chance of holding serve more consistently.