Hey, everyone. On today's episode, we've got Steve Smith. Steve has worked with clubs, academies, juniors, and professionals in over 40 states and 30 countries. He's developed players of all levels, including 12 players who have gone on to win NCAA national championships. On today's episode, we discuss why you should video your serve, where your toss should be, and the importance of the second serve.
So sit back, relax, and prepare to become a smarter tennis player. All right, Steve, welcome to the pod. Jonathan, thanks. Happy to be with you today, you and your listeners. I get so many messages on... Instagram, emails, and it's all about the serve. And it is a very, very important shot, obviously. And people have questions. My serve, I don't like it. It's not consistent. It doesn't have enough pace.
And you are one of the best technical coaches. Like we've said, you've learned from so many great coaches from the past. So you can't see everybody serve out there. People tend to make common mistakes. Generally speaking, if you were going to walk on the court and try to help someone with their serve, what is the first place that you would start? Well, you know, first of all, I think you want to film players. You want to find out what their goals are.
And to me, recreational tennis and competitive tennis are one and the same. A grip is a grip. A forehand is a forehand. But you do have to find out what the... A person's schedule is, say, adult tennis, are they in a league? I mean, do they have a match on Tuesday and you're talking to them on Monday? So that could really be a disservice. So you really have to ask some questions before you proceed with technical input.
you know, do they have the schedule to get better? Do they have, are they willing to do, if you're going to make a change and the athletes are by our computer, you've got to deprogram, reprogram. Do they have the time to film? If someone's. If someone's played tennis, we make it a prerequisite. We make it mandatory. We have to film. We're not going to give a lesson if we don't film, especially now. I mean, everybody's got a camera in their pocket. I mean, the cell phone.
I can go through each pillar. I think of the last one we talked about, Peter Burwash. Peter had this great idea where he would have people come up to the net and serve backwards. So they have their back to the net. And, you know, we do many tennis drills and we have the emergency shots and we call one the backfire. You know, Nastasi from Bucharest, the Bucharest backfire. Every emergency shot that's hit behind you is a continental group.
You know, a lot of people are wrong with tennis math and they say, well, this shot used a continental grip and this shot used a continental grip. They'd have to know the tennis math, the least amount of calculation. So because what people do when they're facing the net. It's logical, intelligent. They see your target straight ahead and through the net. And over 85% of players go throughout their career with some version of palm up on their serve. It was many years ago. It was Christo Schultz.
One of our students was the director of the National Twelves, and there were two or three people on the staff down at the Delray Beach Tennis Center years ago. And we filmed 50 boys and 50 girls from behind, incognito.
You know, 9 out of 10 had problems with palm up. But that's how they start. Then also, too, when people make the correction with palm up, Jonathan, they usually still stay pretty close to a forehand grip. Maybe they turn over a little bit to a composite. They don't get to a continental. Composites in between. It's made of two. It's between Eastern and Continental. So what they do, and they've been told incorrectly.
Someone has been wrong telling you, well, what you do is you arch your back and you toss way over your head. So right, you toss way to your left. And this person does that as they go backwards. Now their racket's on edge like it should be in a continental grip in a throwing motion.
So, you know, certainly say, for example, someone has a high toss. That's a that's a myth. You know, you have a toss high for more time. Dick Braden, the higher toss, the more crummy. So the higher the toss, more time. more chance to be crummy. There's four components. There's the grip, the swing, the body, and the toss. And so you have to evaluate that. Like if you say to kids, okay, to grab three tennis balls, younger kids grab two because their hands are smaller, just run and serve.
run and serve going to the net. And while they have a high toss, they can't do that drill. And that goes back to, say, Dennis Vandermeer, which is a corrective measure. Dennis Vandermeer, a corrective measure is you tell someone to do something and they can do it without thinking.
So you make the change instead of, once again, have it being dissertation. Well, you got a high toss. The ball weighs two ounces. What are you going to do on a windy day? Instead of get into all the facts and say, OK, let's see you hit serves on the run. But then I think also to the. the Bradenism, the KISS method, keep it simple, stupid. Well, people aren't stupid. And it's really tougher today because kids will be misinterpreting YouTube clips and they don't know what they're looking at. So...
With the serve, the biggest thing, if they're going to deprogram, reprogram, is you've got to give them homework and you've got to give them all these off-court routines. If someone's going to make a technical change, you don't really even need to be on a tennis court. It is upsetting where people think, well, great base, they make you hit off a cone. Well, have you ever been to a baseball game? For 15 years, I taught next to where the Yankees play spring baseball.
But that's just part of the culture. You know, it could be Derek Jeter, balls on a tee, he's got a swing coach. That's what they call the person next to him, a swing coach. And then they get in the stadium and they're on deck and they get in the on-deck circle and they're taking practice swings. But with a serve, you know, we have people just starting practice where they can throw a ball.
You know, really good players, like say, you know, you played at Duke. Those are really good tennis players. There's a good chance if you were to film the boys in the lineup, say the top six guys, they don't throw a ball very well. They can serve. They can serve okay. But they didn't grow up playing baseball. So I think throwing, so many different exercises. But people want to, if someone understands the work.
Like, okay, this is going to be the end result. You're going to get worse before you get better. I think that's a big green light. The other thing, though, is that... if they say in college tennis if the coach had the guts to say i'm not playing you till you change your serve i'm in charge We recruited you. I mean, I think all these kids that are blue chippers, it's like most of them should go to college and take the first year off because they don't hit the ball well enough.
They all want to play pro tennis. You played at Duke. How many people from Duke? How many people from Texas? How many people from UCLA? If he comes out, yeah, we're going to prepare you for pro tennis. well, who's playing pro tennis out of this place? So with the toss specifically, I'd like you to articulate you're much better at this than I am. But one thing that I have learned...
over the last year or two is the height of the toss. And the reasons why throwing a toss a million miles in the air is not ideal. And then I have one pet peeve on that too, which is obviously we talk about a lower toss, which the way I've heard it explained on your site is you want to toss slightly higher than you can fully extend up.
It doesn't need to be too much higher than that. And I think I can't remember the exact number. You guys said 20 something inches above your outstretched hand. But people will respond to me on Instagram and say, well, it's easy for you to toss that height because you're tall.
And I would say, well, it doesn't really matter if I'm five feet tall, but I still toss it above my outstretched hand. It's the same as if I'm seven feet tall. Yes, being tall is maybe makes it easier for you to hit a good serve. but that doesn't really affect the height of your toss in relationship to your body. So can you explain what the height of an optimal toss is and then how that impacts your motion?
Well, one thing on being tall, you have to be 14.60 down on your serve. You have to get up on a ladder. With Braden, one time I had the chance to work with a basketball player, Artis Gilmore, and I told him that he was too short to hit. I said, you're too short to hit down on your serve. He told me no one had ever told me he was too short. You don't really need to toss any higher than your outside arm and racket. The racket's 27 inches, about the same length as someone's arm.
And that's where the 20 inches comes in. But also, too, is that if I put my two fingers up like this and they're the same size, or I take two pens that are identical and I leave one forward, they're still the same length. But because you toss inside the core, it's lower in space. So that's another factor.
It's like when Federer was being interviewed about the Silic and they asked him a question. He said, well, before he changed his toss or after he changed his toss? Because Goran and Ivanisevic, I'm just going to guess that old Goran, who I loved as a fan. Out of a student of logic, you know, he basically, I'm sure he said, toss like me, where, you know, he was serving no volley. You know, that's what he said. He said, yeah, I'm serving no volley. Very funny guy.
So let's change his toss. And the best servers in the history of the game have low tosses. You know, Roscoe Tanner hit the toss at the apex. But then, you know, you certainly like look at a Sampras, you know, his toss is a little bit higher, had a scissors where he separated his arms. Yeah, people look at it and it just seems so foreign. It's wrong because just about everybody has a toss. It's too high, but they're programmed.
So to deprogram, reprogram, actually it's a fairly easy change in comparison to others. Like it's much more difficult to change a grip than it is to change a toss. The three dimensions of the toss, I mean, a lot of times it's not just that the toss is...
too high and i i told you it was more of a factor that your toss is too far if you're right-handed your toss is too far left and then another factor this that i would say the more important is your toss is too far back because if a kid had palm up They somehow changed where it's a little bit better. Players have palm up when they're young. They toss backwards. Sometimes they even toss behind the baseline to get the ball in the box. So it's like Vandy Roddick. I love doing Roddick.
would tell people that he didn't know how he served so well. You know, and now I've heard him say it's from the legs. But with Roddick, you know, out of frustration, he just put the racket in this position. It's a famous story now. His mother, we have a tape of his mother saying his serve was pitiful. We have the tape where he had to regress palm up. But Roddick at the hit, it's where are all the forces at? Like you can see movement, but you can't see forces.
But where are all the forces at the impact point? And the body should be in at a 45 degree angle. And the body segment should be facing a 45 degree angle. And what should happen at that impact point, you can do it with a high toss, but you have to time that.
You don't fall when the toss falls. So someone has a high toss, but they still go up after it. You can serve with a high toss. But it's like what happens at the moment of truth? And when you look at most players on a serve, at the impact point,
You know, we always say don't bow before the performance. You know, they're going left and they're going backwards. So they have energy going in two different directions. But the brain is so sophisticated is that they make all the counter adjustments. So there's a flaw and there's a counter flaw.
And then that becomes their signature. That becomes their internal wiring of how they serve. So, you know, I like to drill. I know Wayne Bryan did this all the time with his sons where you toss it way out in front, you have to snap it down.
Someone with your size, it is to your advantage to have a longer lever system. You're on the baseline, you serve from the baseline, and you have to hit the ball downward before the service line. Really good servers with a new ball can hit the ball over the fence.
And but they just sort of we say snap down. We say, well, really, when you serve, you want to snap up. But it's that that last segment of the kinetic chain, they have to have the ground reaction force all the way up. But that last segment, it's like when you. Play catch at a picnic. You're playing catch with a little kid. Maybe it's a football. Maybe it's a baseball. You know, their kid's only 70 years old. You just throw very slowly. It's like the quarterback on the sidelines.
you know they're just warming their arm up but they're going through the same motion in slow motion and but no it's so important that you know like thumb down to thumb down You just feel that jolt in your shoulder. So you have to time it. And it's easier to time if it's not falling. So the ball is going to sit in your window. It's a rate of gravity, 32 feet per second per second. So if you toss really high, it's going to fall through the window.
the window where you're going to hit the ball, it's going to fall, it's falling at a fall rate, a faster rate. And generally it's a safe bet that the player will toss some with that. I mean, you know, Gray used to say, You know, he'd get people laugh because he had some donuts and his rear end was a little bit bigger. He'd say, well, the rear end should disappear. He goes, I can't make my rear end disappear.
But when someone hits, their body is just like this. They're not bending at the waist. So it's where the energy goes. So the toss is a key factor, but it's not like... the only factor there's it's like we have to go from the ground up with this whole thing it's so it's so funny when i have people attempt to toss a little bit lower of course they feel more rushed they had less time i i rarely have someone
lower their toss in a lesson or experiment with it and go, oh, that felt like incredible. Wow, this is amazing. Sometimes, but very, very rarely. And the interesting thing to me psychologically is like my wife coached golf. So she would give me lessons and my swing is horrific. And she would tell me to try something. And guess what? It did not feel great right away. And I went to her because I have an issue with my swing. It's not good.
And yet the fact that the new fix didn't feel perfect right away, I'm like, oh, I don't like that. And she would go, oh, that's cool because, you know, I've played in the U.S. Open three times and you shoot 90, but you tell me what you need to do. And I would go, oh, my God, you're right. I'm just like the people I coach. Like I'm just kind of panicking that it didn't feel perfectly right away.
So what would you say to people when they're working on something? Let's say they do come in, they go, you know what? I am only going to toss slightly higher than my outstretched arm, but it doesn't feel great right away. How do they get through that mental hurdle of... I might feel like I'm taking 10 steps back to take 20 steps forward. Well, your wife being a golfer, I grew up with golfers. I tell tennis players all the time, you have to have a golfer's mentality.
Braden we share all the time as well. When do you let your players loosen up? And Vic would say after they win Nationals. So anything he touched turned to gold when he was coaching junior players. You know, well, your player looks mechanical. If someone's going to make some changes and now they're going from automatic to cognitive, they're going to be mechanic. Well, they look mechanical because we're working on mechanics. I do think you have to come back to the player's schedule.
I mean, so many kids will be going to college next year as a freshman, and as soon as they get there, they're going to be taking the matches. And what they really should do is, like they do in basketball, boom.
We're going to work on your skills. So I think it's the human spirit. They have to be committed to the change. You know, and I think really trusting knowledge is, you know, they have to have the trust of the player. Yeah, I'm going to do this. And yeah, you're going to get better, but no, I'm going for it. It's like go for mentality.
You know, people ask me, Jonathan, how long is it going to take to change? And I give him the wise guy answer, a little less than the ice age. Because if you're asking how long it's going to take to change, you're not thinking about the change. You're thinking about how long it's going to take.
And, you know, it's a fact that you can grow myelin at a faster rate if you're just switched on. Like, I'm doing this. And there's so many great books. There's so many great people. Champions Don't Get in Their Own Way. Very simple book. What happens is people create interference. You know, the winning is the curse, is that this is a miles per hour of your serve. You know, Vic Braden, your serve, it's like throwing up a grenade and running underneath it.
You're not going to get any free points. It's like with Agassi, he didn't have a first serve. Great, great ball striker. One of the best ever. He had two-second serves. On TV one time, he said, I would die for an erotic serve. So with a really good serve, there's three positives. You're going to hit an ace.
You're going to be a weak return. You're going to make a forced error. So they can miss a return. They get their racket on it. But it's such a good serve. Then the third one is they hit a minus. They hit a weak ball. So with change. One thing that really helps us out is we document development. So if someone comes and sees us, I mean, I taught hundreds of kids that haven't made it to college tennis. I got an email today and, you know.
You know, a young kid is a good player. He's an 11 on the UTR. And, you know, he just wants to go to the front of the line. And the schools he's looking at, you've got to be a 13, you know, or close to it. You know, you're able, but are you willing? You're able to change, but are you willing? And I do think that's where you're in the private sector now. So I say it all the time that parents and private coaches have it very tough.
Because there's no consequences. You know, I tell parents all the time, you take your kid to a tournament, you just cross your fingers. They're going to play the way they play. But that's where the power of, hey, sit on the bench, kid. It's like, okay, I'm going to do what you tell me. You're in charge of who's in the lineup. Then the thing to document, people come back to work with us the second time, we film again. And it's not like it's...
It's one road. I mean, you can have, say, on the forehand side, you'd have people with three different grips or even a fourth grip, I think, if somebody hit a two-handed forehand. So, yeah, change. They have to embrace it. but they have to embrace the boredom. Right. Are there any, is there any advice, technical tips that you would give someone who wants to work on their second serve? No, we do different drills. Yeah, it's about drills. We do a drill. We just named it Vandermeer.
You have people choke up on the racket, and they bring the racket behind their back. You know, if you look at films that say Sampras, it looks like the racket's going in the direction of the baseline. Because he's swinging equally as fast, but he's increased the upward angle. We have our pillars, but I think of Pancho Seguro years ago. We had people serve from the fence. Serve from the fence, so you have to really go way up high.
Dennis Vandermeer used to have people go on the other side of the fence, stand really close. If they have palm up, the ball's going to hit the fence and come back and hit them in the nose. So really increasing upward angle. It's no different between someone hitting a forehand drive.
which is like the racket's going up a flight of stairs. But then if they hit a top spin lob, it's like the racket goes up an elevator. So they really, they have to have speed and spin. I think most young players, the toss is too far over their head and they're getting spin, but they're not getting speed.
And the reason they get kick is that trajectory makes the ball bounce high. Yeah, yeah, you're making the ball jump up a little bit, but you're playing against people at your level. You're playing against somebody at a different level. Your second serve is just lunch.
They're just going to come in. And a lot of people are like, let me show you this, is that when the ball bounces, this is where it is. Regardless, every ball bounces at the same levels of paint on the court. In the end, I think people have a very small circle. Their lens is not that big. You know, they just can, they look around and go, this is my environment. Who's in my environment? And this is my circle of competition. You know, you played a lot of tennis. I think a lot of...
Young boys, they don't really find out how good they are until they're like 17, 18 years old. Because then they finally play someone. Once you're over the age of 18, everybody's in the same pot. You know, there's no... Well, ITF tournaments, USD tournaments, UTR tournaments, all the alphabet soup is, can you hit it? Well, one thing I tell my players, and I used to say this at Duke too, is they would have a practice and...
They thought they did an okay job. Maybe someone in the group, you know, we have 10 guys on the team. So someone worked the hardest, let's say. But let's say overall, everyone was kind of lethargic, not really into it. I'm like, okay, great. You were the best of the bunch today. UNC is 10 miles down the road and they had a practice today too. And by the way, they're very good. So did you gain on that UNC player today?
You can't see him. You don't know what he did. I'm going to assume that champions practice like champions. And by the way, some of them are already better than you. So you want to close the gap on someone above you, but you're not going to work as hard as them. Tell me how that's going to work out. How are you going to get there in a year? And by the way, how are you going to close that gap if you're working the same? That's still going to be a challenge. It can be done.
So I always try to, like you said, that small lens or you're in this little fishbowl of I live in Mount Pleasant and you only see the kids in Mount Pleasant. Well, there's hundreds of cities in South Carolina where kids also practice tennis and try to work hard.
And then California and Florida. So, yeah, there's people everywhere. And that's a little trick that I kind of use in my brain as a coach and a little bit when I was a player is I'm competing against everybody today, not just the people in my group.
That's good. I think with second serves, I mean, you asked somebody today, you know, who's Rod Laver? Some young kid, they can't tell you who Rod Laver is. That's a problem. But Laver had the comment where, well, if I can't get one out of two serves in, I don't deserve to be in the point anyway. So to have that type of mentality, even Nisevic, I don't think he did it with the labor influence, but he was just getting crushed several, several summers ago. Novak Djokovic is...
His second serve was his lunch and Joe Gregg was just dictating off the second serve. So, I mean, six foot six and great serve. But basically, you see people doing that at doubles now. Just kind of like the three-point shot in basketball. Hey, I'm just going for two big serves. Someone who's from your age group, Rajiv Ram. I mean, you play doubles with him, right? Yeah. What an amazing player. My take on that, you know, he played quite a bit with one of our students, Raven Klassen, but he...
I'm just guessing he's hitting two first serves. I mean, he's hitting spots, and it's just amazing how well he serves. But most kids, when they hit their second serve, they end up right at the baseline. They don't even go into the court. Then when kids get older with palm up,
They don't even know it. And we tell people, yeah, the light at the end of the tunnel is a train coming right out. When you hit your second serve, you actually skip backwards because you have the displaced force. You have to take energy away from it because you're not even hitting topspin on your second serve. Steve, you have definitely, I can say this definitively, you have forgotten more about the game of tennis than I have learned at my young age of 40.
Um, but thank you for sharing everything, you know, thank you for all you do for the community and where can people find great base curriculum and all that stuff online? Uh, just great based tennis.com. Uh, we're on Facebook, Instagram.
We spend more time in the trenches teaching, but for many, many years now, we've been giving out free content. So yeah, just go to greatbasetennis.com. I can't recommend that enough. I've taken all the courses. I've learned so much. It's made me a better coach. So thank you so much.
Oh, you're more than welcome, Jonathan. Thanks for having me on as a guest. All right. I want to thank Steve for coming on the show today. He knows so much about the game. And like I said, I highly recommend you go to greatbasedtennis.com to check out their free courses.
If you can only take away one thing from today, it would be to video your serve along your improvement journey. You need to document what is happening in your stroke so you can objectively assess if things are changing and if they're changing in the correct direction.
If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot to me if you could leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. It's a great way to say thank you and support the show. And as always, thanks for listening. I hope you just improved at tennis without even hitting a ball.