hey guys in today's video i want to show you a really effective serve tactic that can help
you win some free points on your serve and that is the fake kick and in order for the fake kick
to be effective you do have to possess kick serve fundamentals and certain patterns on your service
game on your second serve have to be present as well for this tactic to be effective so let's get
out on the court and i'll show you how to do it and what are second serve fundamentals well you're
gonna have to utilize a kick serve as your second serve that is the best way to hit a second serve
i made a whole video on this subject you can check this video out if you like but in any case if you
don't possess a kick serve this is not gonna be something that you can utilize so what's going to
happen when we're serving as a right-handed player versus a right-handed player we can
direct the vast majority of our second serves kick serves for that matter towards the backhand corner
we can go towards that side if you saw that serve the ball exited outside the doubles alley
and this is a fantastic way to hit a second serve with kick you're gonna definitely get
a backhand that's gonna be hit on the run maybe even the player will be stretched out then you
can hit an offensive shot on the next shot so the absolute best way to hit a kick serve
on the ad side is to direct the vast majority of your kick serve towards the backhand side however
this is a predictable tactic and while there's nothing wrong with being predictable
on the serve you're going to face some tough opponents who are going to get a rhythm on
the return and they're going to start maybe even running around your kick serve if you
don't place it well sometimes you won't get that sharp angle and you'll leave your kick serve
somewhere around there and the player will run around their backhand and smack forehands
so what's gonna be super effective to do is to do a fake kick every now and then and basically what
a fake kick is it's not a kick at all it's gonna be a slice but the way you're gonna fake out your
opponent is in two different ways first of all when you almost always go towards the backhand side
the opponent is going to expect the ball to go to the backhand side so just by you mixing it
up and going down the t you're going to fake your opponent out because your opponent is not
expecting it also when you toss the ball more towards the left especially if you're throwing
it towards 11 o'clock if you learn to have the ability to hit a slice serve from 11 o'clock
this is where you're going to be able to fake out your opponent and hit easy aces down the t
yeah don't fall for the fake kick come on be ready so let me demonstrate so the fake kick is really
not a kick but what i'm going to do here is i'm going to throw the ball towards 11 and from there
i'm going to slice it down the tee so you can see there that even though that serve wasn't struck
that well i didn't get the exact corner that i was aiming for a lot of times that type of serve
will either result in an ace or a service winner because what your opponent will do when you go the
vast majority of times towards the backhand they will start making a move quite early towards the
backhand side they will start making movements like this to cover that backhand side because
they're expecting a backhand return and when they make this little move towards the backhand side and
all of a sudden that ball is going towards the t they have absolutely no chance to cover that ball
now how often do you see fake kicks at the elite level you don't see them that often you know why
because this is a high risk proposition this is a low percentage play so the way
high percentage targets work on the serve is in the following way
any time you go wide on your serve you can equate that with going cross-court because
the distance towards the target is larger that is a high percentage target so when you go hard
into the corner you have more of a likelihood to make your serve when you go towards the ad side
on the other hand if you go towards the t that is a low percentage target you see i missed that one
because you're basically going down the line and the distance from the contact
to the target is much shorter and therefore there's more of a likelihood that you're going
to miss your serve the same is true for the deuce side when we're going out wide this is basically
cross-court there's more of a likelihood to make these serves and we go up the t this is basically
hitting down the line you can see i missed that one as well and the distance to the target again
is going to be longer when we're going out wide it's going to be shorter we're going down the
tee now it doesn't mean that we should never go down the t especially on the first serve this
we can be more advantageous you can afford to miss to serve now some players will fall in love with
going down the t because the problem is that returners will stand close to the doubles alley
and now the t appears to be wide open and that's why many players fall in love with
the temptation of going down the t but you have to keep in mind that even though
the middle of the court with your serve appears to be a spot where you can hit easy aces number one
you're going to be missing more serves and your opponent can still cover the ball the reason why
players stand closer to the doubles alley it has to do with the trajectory of the serve so let
me show you what i mean by trajectory if i go out wide you'll see that that ball will exit the court
next to the doubles alley so it exits the court in the red area over there and the player that's
returning has to be able to cover that trajectory on the other hand if i go down the t unless i'm
hitting an absolutely insane slice serve which is unlikely to happen that ball will not
curve off the court you can see that that ball is going straight through the court and the returner
can cover the ball for that reason the returner can leave the middle of the court open but the
returner has to cover the out wide serves so in the context of what i'm trying to teach you with
the fake kick this is very important to understand so the reason why you're going to be directing the
vast majority of your kick serves towards the backhand is not only because you want to target
the backhand but it's also going to be a very high percentage target and you're going to be making
very few double faults having said that a very good returners will be able to put you under
pressure on your second serve and you need to have the ability to every now and then
fake them out and go down the t okay oh see then i now as i said before the reason why you don't
see the fake kick too often at the elite level because it is a low percentage play however low
percentage plays have their time and their place and this is something that i use every now and
then in very special circumstances i would do a fake kick maybe twice a set not more than that
and i use it at very specific moments where i find that they can benefit me tremendously i usually do
it in a moment where my confidence is high if i do it when my confidence is low let's say i'm losing
or i'm down break point these are desperate moves in those circumstances and often and with double
faults however if i feel like my confidence is high and i'm like 30 15 40 30 or add in
i will every now and then do the fake kick which is basically mimicking a
kick serve by throwing the ball way to the left and then slicing it up the tee
okay that was a miss hit but i guarantee you that still would have been a pretty decent serve
the other person would have gotten the back but let me try it again here comes the fake kick
and there you go i guarantee you that that serve is an ace 9 out of 10 times why
not because it was the greatest serve in the world but the opponent is
expecting the ball to go out wide they're leaning towards that side
and i can get an easy ace or service winner by mixing it up with a fake kick every now and then
and you're probably thinking nick why not hit an actual kick serve that would be a higher
percentage play even though you're going down the tee instead of slicing why not just hit a
kick serve and directly towards the t the reason why this is not going to work because
generally when we strike a kick serve the ball will not go through the court
it will have absolutely no chance to have a leftward trajectory after the bounce generally
well executed kick serves have a rightward trajectory after the ball bounces so if i attempted a fake kick
serve on a second serve with an actual kick the ball will go right into my opponent's forehand
now i hit that one pretty well but what you have to understand is that a kick serve is
absolutely the slowest serve that we have and players of a high caliber will be able to cover
that even though that serve looked pretty good the ball had a slight rightward trajectory and
the opponent would have definitely been able to hit a forehand even if they guessed wrong in the
very beginning because the pace of a kick service a lot slower than the pace that you can achieve
on a slice serve we got to remember when it comes to surf speed the absolutely fastest way to serve is
a flat serve it's then the slice and the absolute slowest serve that you can do is a kick serve why
is it a lot slower than the other serves well for two reasons number one reason we are not utilizing
torso rotation so we lose a big power source there and also anytime you spin the ball you are losing
power as a result of that so when it comes to the fake kick don't do an actual kick the fake part
of the serve tactic is that you're going to mimic a kickstarter by throwing the ball way over towards
your left if you happen to be right-handed and from there you have to manage to hit a solid slicer
down the t which will result in you getting a service winner or an ace on a lot of occasions
i want to repeat don't fall in love with this strategy
it will not work if you overuse it you know start double faulting like crazy
i would say a maximum twice a set and only do it when your confidence is high
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this course with a seven-day free trial you can cancel within seven days you pay absolutely
nothing if you wanted to become a member at intuitivetennis.com it's 14.99 a month
and in this intuitive tactics course not only do i cover serve tactics in great detail but
also the return tactics baseline tactics net tactics and much more so if you're interested
go to intuitivetennis.com or get the intuitive tennis app on the ios store or the android store