Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 415 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to unlock the Perfect Slice Serve.
In the last several years, and I mean really, throughout the history of tennis, a key one-two punch in the game of tennis has been for a right-handed player on the doose side to hit a big curving slice serve that goes out wide and then keeps trailing off the court. And it just pulls there either, you know, obviously this could just be an ace. If you hit the corner perfectly and there's a lot of spin and the ball curves and keeps going wider and wider and
wider. You could just win the point outright or if your opponent gets it back, it's pulling them actively off the court and now it opens up a super easy target on the other side of the court for shot number two. So this kind of one-two punch or a serve plus one. Over the last, I don't know, pride decade and a half, maybe two decades has become just a go-to play. Last several years in particular at professional levels of the game and you can do it too. If you're a left-handed
player, then where this really pays off is on the ad side. And I think lefties, speaking from personal experience being a left-handed player myself, I think for whatever reason, we tend to really milk the crap out of this on the ad side because we have the big left-to-right curve as left-handed players. And so it matches on the ad side when we're serving from left to
right and the ball pulls way off to the side. I don't know, for whatever reason, right-handed players, you all have the same exact opportunity geometrically speaking and in terms of the curve of your serve, it's just on the do side. But it seems like every day recreational players, amateur players, club players just don't seem to take advantage of it very well. And that's exactly what this episode
is going to be about. I'm going to tell you exactly how to place the ball in exactly that spot and also tell you how to create the curve and the spin to add on top, basically pour fuel on top of the fire. I mean, if you hit a flat serve perfectly into the corner that's already good, but then if you can, in addition to that, make it curve as a righty from right to left. And you get the placement just right. Now we have a huge double whammy that really makes our
opponent's lives extremely challenging. So let's dive right into it really quickly first. You know, over the, I don't make a whole lot of asks here on the podcast. If you've ever gotten value out of this show, if you've improved your game, if you've gained insights and appreciation
and enjoyment of the game, could you do me a favor and just share the show with somebody? Just, just link somebody who's a teammate, maybe a hitting partner or even even a coach or maybe a captain of your team or whoever somebody, somebody else who has a passion for the game just as much as you. Can you do me a favor? I know somebody just came to mind. Can you do me a favor and share whatever the recent episode is that's been most helpful with with somebody else and just say,
hey, you should probably check this out. I would really appreciate that tremendously. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your your support. Okay, so we're going to break this into two parts, the placements and then the curve. And we need to get the rights ducks in a row for both of those factors at the same time. And we're going to really optimize and maximize this strategy. And so we're going to link both of those factors back to a magic phrase that, you know, I don't
and honestly, I don't remember how much I've talked about this on the podcast. I've talked about this quite a lot in my videos the last couple years, but because the podcast has been a little bit sporadic, I don't remember how much I've talked about this. But even if you've heard me describe this before, please listen carefully because the implications, I don't I don't think any single concept for me. I've been coaching over 20 years now. I don't think any single concept
had maybe the kinetic chain. The whole idea of the kinetic chain is way up there for me as far as like single most impactful concept for my coaching and my understanding of the game and my ability to break things down and kind of make it easy for other people to understand what to do and how and why. And this is at the top, very near the top of the list. The whole idea of the kinetic, kinetic chain is very, it's probably either one or two. And then this is the other one or two.
And that is this phrase, the face sends it, the path bends it, the face sends it, the path bends it in a nutshell. We're going to unpack that. But in a nutshell, here's what that means. At the instant, the ball touches the strings on your racket and the ball is only touching the strings for 4,000ths of a second. It touches and leaves incredibly fast. For reference, it takes about 70,000ths of a second to blink. And it only takes 4,000ths of a second less than 10% the time of a
blink of an eye for the ball to touch your strings and then leave the strings. So during that tiny split second instant, the angle of your strings is by far the biggest factor in the direction that the ball travels as it leaves your racket. Hence the face sends it meaning the racket face or in other words, the angle of your strings. So if you hit a ball, any tennis ball, any tennis shot, and your strings are facing up, the ball will go up. If your strings are facing
down, the ball will go down. There's really no way to cheat that. The only exception is if you just don't hit the strings. If you swing and you just shank the crap out of the ball and you hit the frame, then the ball is not going to go where the strings are facing. So with that, with that exception out of the way, wherever the strings are facing, when the ball leaves your strings, that's the starting trajectory or direction the ball is going to go. The face sends it. So we're going to get
to the path part in a minute. So this is the bottom line physics explanation for how you place your slice serve out wide is at the moment of contact your strings need to be angled out to the left corner of the doose side. And just for the rest of the episode, I'm going to be referring to right-handed mechanics, lefties, you're used to making the switch in your head. And we're going to be talking exclusively about slicing the ball way out wide on the doose side for right-handed
player, and curving the ball way out to the left. So placing the ball to that outside corner is all about the face sends it. In other words, the strings at the instant the ball touches the strings need to be angled out to the left when you're a right-handed player serving out wide on the doose side. Now it's not a lot. It's it's only and the spread by the way between hitting a perfect T serve right down the middle and hitting a perfect wide serve as far as you can aim it all the
way out wide. It's only about a 19 degree difference in the angle of the strings. That's your too far like furthest extreme targets hitting the center service line like right on the T and going way out wide. It's only about a 19 degree difference. And every other target in between the furthest wide serve and the most middle T serve you can possibly hit is somewhere in between those 19 degrees of kind of spanner, maximum directional difference between going straight down the middle
and all the way out wide. So the secret to placing your serve all the way in the corner is simply turning your hand. There's no need to change your grip. All you need to do is turn the angle of your hand which in turn will turn the angle of your strings out to the left. So if you're trying to get your slice or or any serve to go out wide and you just keep hitting right into the middle of the box, you have to turn your hand more to the left. Again, just talking about the do side serving
out wide for a right handed player. So if you want by the way, if you want to see a visual representation of this, if you're more of a visual learner, go to YouTube and do a search for Essential Tennis Serve Science. Essential Tennis Serve Science. And you'll see a video where we recorded a coach hitting a perfect T serve and a perfect wide serve from overhead using a drone. And we analyzed the angle of the strings for both of those extreme targets and then did a comparison.
That's where I got the 19 degrees between the far out wide and all the way down the T. So that's the technical kind of bottom line to actually placing the ball exactly where you want it to go. Now to train this ability, because here's the thing, if you serve properly and I'm just going to skim over this like very 30,000 foot view, just not what we have time to dive into today. If you serve properly and you have something close to a continental grip and you have a racket drop
where the racket's on edge and you pull the racket upwards with an edge position. And then you release that edge position and you pronate through the point of contact, your strings are going through almost 180 degrees of rotation and release and unwinding. If you have no idea what I just said, then probably best to watch a couple of deep dives in the serve mechanics and technique on YouTube. Essentials and I mean, the Essentials and YouTube channel has deep dive videos and just about every
possible topic. So you can check out the YouTube channel. But on a high level serve, the hand and the racket face, the strings are going through 180 degrees of rotation and only 19 degrees of that 180 are viable for the ball to go anywhere in the correct box. And then within those 19 degrees, if you have a particular target in mind to hit the tee or go out wide or jam your opponent with a body serve, there's only a few, there's probably only two or three degrees margin of air to actually
hit an effective serve to the target you actually want the ball to go. And this is why most tennis players never pick a target other than the box. And this makes me so sad as a coach working with passionate players year after year, decade after decade and seen players for all intents and purposes, just aim for the box. And they have no ability to differentiate between I want to pick on their backhand or I'd like to actually jam them up or I'd like to pull them way out wide off the court.
Placing the ball out wide for the perfect slice serve like we're talking about today. There's no confidence because there's no training in being able to find that two or three degrees pocket of racket face angle to hit exactly where we want the ball to go. And the reality is, I mean, let me just acknowledge if what I just described kind of makes your head explode, the fact that the racket face is going through 180 degrees of full movement and we only have about 19
degrees of acceptable like to have the ball go anywhere in the box. And then they hit an exact target. We only have about two or three degrees out of 180. It's crazy, isn't it? We're talking about tiny tiny very precise margins of error. And so I don't blame players for trying it out a couple of times and like wanting to go out wide, but the ball just kind of every time goes down the team, they're like, oh, well, this is stupid. I guess I'm, you know, I'm just not good enough. I'm just
going to aim for the box. Here is how you develop this skill. And so let me give two different variations of this, right? If you're like beginner to maybe lower intermediate, if you're below a 4.0 level here in the here in the United States, beginner to kind of middle like intermediate level player, break each service box into halves lengthwise. So we have an in effect, a forehand half of the court and a backhand half of the court to be able to aim our serve and make our opponent hit a
forehand or a backhand return of serve. So just just in half. And so if you do that with both service boxes, you've got four distinct targets. And now get a basket of balls and pick one of those four halves and hit it with a flat serve, a first serve three times in a row. That means if you hit it the first time, you hit it the second time, but the third serve goes into the net, go back to zero again and keep going until you make it three times to that half of the box that you
started aiming for. That name for the other half of the box and make it three times in a row. Then go over to the ad side and start off down the T, a.k.a. to a righty's forehand. Make that three times in a row and then go out wide, righty's backhand. On the ad side, hit it three times in a row. Then go back to the do side and now hit second serves, a.k.a. slice or topspin, whichever you normally hit. Hopefully, hopefully you have the ability
hit some kind of spin. We're going to talk about exactly how to do that in just a second. And now make three in a row to each of the four halves of the service boxes. If you're above a 4.0 level here in the United States, a.k.a. kind of advanced intermediates or high level player, break each box into thirds instead of halves. Now you've got six different target zones and make three in a row first serves to all six. Now we have out wide, we have a body serve
and we have a T serve. If you want to call it a forehand target, a body target and a backhand target. Hit three first serves in a row to all six thirds. Both do side and ad side. Then hit three
second serves to all six thirds. Do side and the ad side, all six combined. I just assigned that break it in half assignment to a new remote student, just quick anecdote here, who have been working on his serve mechanics for about a year and just really obsessing over hitting all the right positions, hitting all the right aesthetic, trophy pose and racket drop and contact point and pronation and follow through and all of it. And his serve looked great.
But he had only been aiming for the box. And when he went into matches, his pretty looking serve was completely failing. I mean, total frustration. So he went to a tremendous amount of work and trouble to kind of mimic and copy all the right positions. But he had no ability to actually utilize any of those pretty positions because he had done zero work and training to develop the
precision required to execute his good mechanics with a high degree of consistency. So not only could he not find the two or three degrees, you know, to hit our wide or hit down the sea, he was struggling to find the 19 degree, you know, span between just like hitting the box, like hitting anywhere in the box. Both first serves and second serves. Same thing like the ball is just going all over the
place. He made it look good, but he had no precision. And I gave him this homework and it took him an hour to hit each of the four halves three times in a row with a first serve and a second serve. Now, this takes time. And eventually, because we're talking about such a tiny margin of air to hit out wide or hit down the tee, it requires enough training that it just becomes intuitive and it just becomes a feel. It's absolutely impot, this happens so fast that the strings are facing
exactly where we want the ball to go. That there's no way you can consciously make it happen. It's impossible. Like it happens way too fast to deliberately consciously like force the strings to face the right direction. You got to just let the racket swing and then train with a lot of repetition focused on the angle of the face at contact, the right feel to be able to hit the ball out wide and down the tee on the do side and out wide and down the tee on the ad side with a first
serve and a second serve on both sides. And then eventually break it into thirds and go out wide and body and down the tee on both sides. This is hard work and requires a tremendous amount of precision and repeatability with just the right timing to consistently hit exactly where we want the ball to go. And this is what it takes to be a good tennis player. So in a nutshell, that's the placement part of it. The face sends it. And we need to time the strings facing exactly
that out wide location at the instant the ball touches the strings. And going through that drill on a regular basis is going to help develop that ability to just place the ball out wide on command when you're serving on the do side and you want to pull your opponent off the court. Okay, so now the path bends it. The face sends it is all about location. Now the direction the racket is
traveling. That's the path. The path of the racket at the instant the ball touches the strings determines if it's going to be a flat shot, meaning very little to no rotation on the ball. Or a slice which on a serve means side spin. Or a kick serve which is top spin, which means the ball is rotating and over and over the top of the ball. Or any combination or kind of mix of top spins and side spin or slice, we can do anything in between by changing the path of the racket.
So to create slice on a serve to make the ball curve from right to left as a righty, the path of the racket needs to travel from left to right past the back of the ball. And if the racket does not travel from left to right, the ball will not spin and therefore it will not curve and we won't actually be able to hit a slice serve that bends and pulls our opponent off the court. So another way of thinking about this, if at the instant you touch the ball with
your strings, your strings are facing out wide, the ball will go out wide. But if the direction the racket is swinging also is traveling in that direction, you'll never create slice and the ball will never curve. You can only ever hit a flat serve and that's not wrong or bad. But it's so powerful to have different tools in your toolbox to be able to hit a flat serve down the T and then a slice serve out wide on the do side and then a kick serve out wide on the ads.
Like developing all these distinct, distinctly different tools to be able to pull out in different directions on different sides against different opponents takes a tremendous amount of patience and understanding and repetition and practice and training all of it. I don't think it's very well understood or appreciated how challenging and how difficult this really is to develop all these different locations and targets and spins and curves and all the
rest of it. So to create an epic wide slice serve on the do side as a writing, the face sends it. That means at the moment of impact our strings need to be facing that target. And in addition to that, your racket path needs to be traveling out to the side to the right of where your target is. So if you're standing in, let's say a singles position like pretty close to the middle,
the center of the baseline to serve. And we get the racket face nailed. So all our serves are going out into the forehand corner out wide to create a lot of curve that in addition to placing the ball at wide. The ball also bends and curves further out wide. The path of your racket needs to be traveling round about towards the net post on the right side of the net. And this is the hardest
part. If you currently don't have a big curve, if you don't have the ability to really bend the ball, then a tennis is much harder for you than it should be because that curve helps us create margin of error helps us be more consistent and hit the ball more confidently without making a lot of mistakes because the bend in the ball allows us to aim higher over the net and that bend in that curve allows us to hit it. Many different heights and speeds and still have the ball fall into the box.
But we can also use that curve to in this instance, for today's topic, add additional challenge and pull our opponent further and further and further off the court if we can successfully combine the right placement with the right amount of spin and the right amount of curve. So breaking, this is a please pay super close attention. If you're still listening, if you're super nerdy, you're still listening to this. I love how into this, the details and the
nuance of this. I love podcast listeners because you guys are so passionate about the game. You want to learn so much. The next 30 seconds is critical. So hit a great spin serve, the direction of the path of your racket and the angle of the face of your racket at contact has to be different. You cannot swing in the same direction that your strings are facing at contact and make spin.
And for most beginners and moving up into intermediate levels of play, the direction of the path of the racket and the angle of the strings of the racket are almost always linked together, especially for beginner players or players that don't make it out of let's just say 35. If you've been at the 35 level for years or maybe even decades and you just don't have a big curving slice serve or top spin serve, it's because 100% like the you can't fool the physics
here. All right. Like the face sends it, the path bends it. It is just hard core like locked in stone and you can't change the laws of nature and the laws of physics. If you don't have a big bending curving slice serve or kick serve, it's because the path of your racket and the face of
your racket are always locked into the same direction. And that's the easiest way to start playing tennis and just make the ball go in a certain direction, but you will never ever spin and curves the ball as long as the direction of your strings and the direction of your racket path are locked together and they're the same. So here is the drill to break away from that. And I'm going to
describe it here, but to see it in action. And by the way, to see everything in action that I've been describing today, you can go to YouTube and do a search for the exact title of this episode, unlock the perfect slice serve and you can add an essential tennis and you'll see a video lesson that shows real life examples of everything I'm talking about today, professional examples, everyday, you know, club player examples. So if you want to get a visual of all of this,
just go to YouTube and check out that lesson. So here's how you develop the curve. Here's my favorite drill, forgetting players to break apart the angle of the strings and the path of the racket. So I have players stand in the middle of the service line and first just do a slow shadow swing where their racket path traces the center service line. Just kind of visualize the racket traveling down the center service line right towards the net strap, right down the
middle of the court. That would be a swing path to hit a flat serve if we were hitting the serve right down the tee. Then I have the player shadow swing slowly a racket swing path that traces the service line. So a 90 degree difference in the path of the racket. The first shadows, the racket was traveling right dead down the middle of the court and then the second set of shadows, the racket is traveling straight sideways. It couldn't be more different, straight down
the middle and then straight out to the side. Then after getting familiar with that swing path straight out to the side, I'll have my student toss a ball in the air with the instruction, just keep swinging sideways. Do not swing forwards, just keep tracing the service line, not the center service line, the service line and keep the path of your racket traveling straight out to the side.
One of two things typically happens either they go right back to swinging forwards again and so they just hit another flat ball or they will change the path of the racket and they'll swing the the path of the racket out to the side. But they also turn the strings to face out to the side as well because they're so used to the angle of the strings in the path of the racket being locked together in the same direction that they'll just turn their hand and turn the strings
out to the side while they swing out to the side. What happens is the ball goes out to the side and it ends up being a flat shot that goes way off to the side of the court instead of going towards the service box. The way you curve the ball on a serve is by swinging the racket out along the service line or out along the baseline and this would be for slice but it's also a close
cousin to a topspin serve which I don't have time to get into today. But the way you make a lot of spin is by swinging the racket out to the side while keeping the strings facing forwards. Just picture that in your mind briefly. The path of the racket is swinging out to the side if you're righty out to the right while the strings of your racket stay facing forwards towards the other side of the court. That is how you bend the ball and create a ton of curve.
That's how you spin the ball. It's by creating a swing path that's very different than the strings at contact. So tying it all back together, the face sends it wherever the strings are facing a contact the ball is going to go in that direction. The path bends it. Whatever direction your racket path is traveling at the point of contact that's what determines is this a flat shot. Is it a side spin shot? Is it a topspin shot? Is it a backspin shot? That's how you curve or bend
at the ball is with the path of the racket. So to bring it all together to hit a perfect slice serve as a righty on the doocyte pull our opponent way off the court. At the point of contact we need the strings facing that out wide corner of the box. And at the same time we need the path of our racket to be moving aggressively from the left to right across the back of the ball. That is what will curve or bend the ball. And if we don't do both of those at the same time
we're not going to hit a perfect slice serve. Oh, why? It might still be a good serve but it's not going to I mean I know if you watch tennis I know you can picture exactly what I'm talking about. Super satisfying serve that not not only lands like perfectly in the corner but then keeps curving and curving and curving off the court to pull the opponent way off the court.
This is how you do it. That's how you place it and that's how you bend it. And if you want to see visual examples of everything I talked about go to YouTube and do search for unlock the perfect slice serve essential tennis and you'll see visual examples of everything that I just talked about. Hopefully this was super helpful. And if you'd like to add 15 miles per hour of power to your forehand in just 15 minutes of practice I've got a special training video for you. It's at
forehandpower.com. Just go to forehandpower.com. It's totally free. All you have to do is put in your name, your email address and you'll get immediate access to the lesson and it goes step by step into kinetic chain and how to stay relaxed and fluid and smooth and also how to curve the ball to keep it in play while you hit it harder and harder. It's everything you need. A to Z to add 15 miles per hour to your forehand in just 15 minutes of practice. Again that's at forehandpower.com.
forehandpower.com. Thanks for listening today. We really appreciate having you as a listener. And I'm looking forward to hopefully staying on the horse and keeping the episode coming.
I'll talk to you again next time. Take care. For more free, game improving instruction be sure to check out essentialtennis.com where you'll find hundreds of video, audio and written lessons. Also be sure to subscribe to essential tennis on iTunes and YouTube where we are the number one resource in the world providing passionate instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care and good luck with your tennis.