A Few Tips for Developing an Effective Tennis Serve

​Tennis provides a full-body workout and offers health benefits ranging from a decreased risk of heart disease to an extended lifespan. According to the United States Tennis Association, a record 25.7 million Americans played tennis. Individuals picking up the sport for the first time must learn how to develop an effective serve, arguably the most important shot in the game.

Players must master the serve for two reasons. Firstly, the serve represents the only time during a tennis match when the player has complete control of the ball. They can stand at the service line, take a deep breath, carefully consider what type of serve they want to hit, and then execute the shot. At all other times, players must respond to their opponent's shots and deal with some level of pressure.

Second, the sport's scoring system places considerable importance on holding serve, or defending one's service games. In tennis, players expect to hold serve and can only win a match by breaking their opponent's serve at least once. A player who manages to hold all of their service games has an extremely high likelihood of winning the match.

The serve involves multiple moving body parts and weight transfers. Amateur players should strongly consider taking tennis lessons or watching instructional videos to learn the basics of the service motion. That said, from a technical perspective, few aspects of the serve are as important as the ball toss.

As with all shots in tennis, players develop a unique service motion, and their ball toss may differ from another player's. However, a player's ball toss should be consistent and look virtually identical from one point to the next, with slight variations depending on the type of serve they want to hit.

To get a feel for an ideal ball toss, players should extend their arm overhead while holding their racket at the height at which they want to contact the ball, though they may hit it higher if they use a jump serve technique. Players should toss the ball slightly higher than their desired contact point.

The serve a player wants to hit influences other aspects of the ball toss. To hit a flat serve, for example, players want to throw the ball slightly in front of them so they contact it inside the court. A flat serve, as the name suggests, lacks spin and exchanges margin of error for pace and power. Players typically reserve flat serves for their first serves, opting for a safer option when hitting a second serve.

Players should practice a very similar ball toss for slice serves, though they may want to strike the ball even further into the court. Right-handed players usually toss the ball slightly more to their right when hitting slice serves, with left-handed players tossing the ball a bit more to the left. Players can use the slice serve to drag opponents off the court or to disguise serves along the center of the service box, making it an effective change-of-pace first serve, while the considerable side spin makes it a strong option for second serves.

Finally, the ball toss for a top-spin serve, or kick serve, involves tossing the ball slightly farther back, though not behind the player's head. This position allows players to put top spin on the ball, causing the ball to jump off the court. The top spin serve is a highly effective option for second serves, though a kick serve directly into an opponent's body can work as an effective change-of-pace first serve.

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