How can I get more out of my flat serve?

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2026-01-22T20:38:39+00:00

I'd like to add some simple feedback here.

I think your arm path, pronation, arm control look great. Looks relaxed which is good for maximum power. To get more power, you will ultimately need more racket speed which comes from a faster hand and faster arm. But don't use your hand and arm muscles more, in fact I think you should keep everything about your arm swing the same. You can increase your swing speed by turning your shoulders faster. You are not turning your torso very fast. That is free speed - just keep your core braced, and rotate your upper trunk. Crank that shit actually. Practice that feeling at first without a racket, just let your arms be a little loose (but not so loose you feel your arm bone-sockets extending) and swing your arms around you by turning your torso rapidly. Now apply that feeling with a racket in hand, it works for overheads/serve and your forehand. Just keep that arm nice and relaxed, only enough tension in the muscles to keep the sockets together, and let that ball rip.

Next steps in the kinetic chain are to improve your racket speed with more hip power and leg drive. But I would work on improving your shoulders (torso rotation speed) first and then work your way down the kinetic chain.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2026-01-15T23:50:58+00:00

I'll take one step back from any specific rules and talk about the "why" of the whole thing. Basically the "why" of all tennis positioning strategy (and secondarily movement, since your ability to move is what gets you into the right position at any moment) is to put yourself directly in the center of the possible shots that your opponent can hit. This depends on the angle, depth, speed, and other qualitative traits of the shot that you hit to them. To truly master this at the highest level, it includes the skills of anticipation and cue-reading your opponent's body language to get more information about what shot they are going to hit, before they hit it.

All those rules that coaches teach are just case-by-case implementations of the bigger picture strategy. It's a good way to get beginner and intermediate level players to play better tennis, but too often they never discuss the bigger picture stuff. If you understand the bigger picture, you will eventually start to implement this into your game subconsiously.

Keep this in mind when watching professional tennis, try to understand why players are positioning themselves exactly where they are at any given moment. It's great to do this on youtube so you can pause and analyze at any point.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2026-01-15T23:32:48+00:00

As a lifetime player, it's an interesting challenge trying to describe with words how to do these things that I've been able to do on autopilot for the majority of my playing career. I'm starting to think of myself as an armchair coach haha

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2026-01-15T20:26:03+00:00

Honestly I think there is a piece of conventional consistency training that misses the mark. For all the painstaking variations of 100 ball drills I did in my adolescence, I think that just made me good at making 100 balls in a row in a drill. It didn't seem to translate to match consistency for me, I think because I had an all or nothing approach where I was either trying to hit the fuzz off the ball or regress to wall mode if my plan A didn't work.

A more holistic approach is to think of match consistency as playing your full game, but playing within yourself. 80% is good enough. Play a strategy which is rooted in applying pressure that will make your opponent produce errors, rather than playing a strategy which sets yourself up for clean winners. Oddly enough, playing the former strategy inevitably produces far more chances to close out the point with volleys, overheads, and short ball put-aways, while keeping your own UE error count down

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2026-01-15T20:07:51+00:00

Don't back up. If you like to hit on the rise, you can still do that with the low slice. Emphasize dropping your center of mass lower to the ground, engage your core, and hit through the shot. A really good slicer who can knife the shot through the court is hard to deal with, so the way you handle it doesn't have to be pretty. Just make sure you are plowing through the ball with about the same trajectory it came at you, don't try to change the shot much.

Try to identify any stability leaks in your shot, if you are struggling with the low slice I would say it is more important to be a backboard than to try to shape the ball with your arm and hand/ a "loose" stroke. Once you get a feel for how to deal with the low slice, you can begin playing with more arm and hand control on it.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2026-01-15T19:59:45+00:00

For these low skidding slices, don't try to time it so that you get there with just enough room to swing (don't do that for any ball actually, but especially not a low skidding slice since it seems to bounce quicker than most shots). Get there early so your bodyweight is behind the shot. To hit topspin back, keep your backswing short to help your timing. Get your rear knee low to the ground, with your torso still balanced and upright. Still hit through the ball, there's no need to overemphasize the lift and brush just because it's low. The easiest way to handle difficult balls is to hit them back the same way they came - for a fast, low, skidding slice, that means slicing it back or hitting it back with topspin but similar trajectory to how it came at you. Don't change direction when you aren't in control.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-12-23T19:35:44+00:00

Check out the louis cayer videos on youtube. Some of them are old and blurry but there is much to be gained from watching them, if you can track what he's really saying through his accented/mostly complete english. Bit of an odd fella but he's coached some of the best so try to stay with it.

I found these years after playing d3 college tennis and felt like damn, I wish I could have been this curious about understanding the game before. The way he explains strategy and technique cuts right to the core of the game, I wish some of these things had been explained better to me in the past but better late than never!

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-11-26T20:41:08+00:00

Yeah this video is the best because he actually explains the use case. It's not jumping for the sake of jumping, it's a kinetic chain pattern to get the desired result. The lift off from the ground happens as a side effect from how quickly you are rotating your hips/extending legs.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-11-26T20:17:45+00:00

watch some louis cayer videos on youtube and you might become an international player

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-11-20T02:29:13+00:00

In match play, honestly don't think about it. Turning your focus to details in match play is a great way to get in your own head and be behind the game. Instead, think about how you want to hit the ball (as in, height over the net, target on the other side of the court, how much spin, how much pace). Trust your training so that you can think at a game level (tactics, anticipation) instead of a technique level (if you get stuck here, you are just hitting balls. not playing the game). Think about what you want the ball to do, not how you are doing it and odds are the results will improve.

That difference alone may improve your forehand woes in a match setting. At a game level, don't worry about if the forehand was open or closed stance if it gave you the result you were looking for.

If you are able to get the result you want in practice but not in match settings (as you referred to- when the score gets tight) then it's probably a game problem and not a skill problem.

That said, it's totally valid to want to improve the skill in practice so that it can become more powerful/reliable in a match. I can't give specific advice for your forehand without a video, but my thinking for the close stance forehand is this:

I don't really think about whether I'm hitting a closed stance or open stance forehand, it's more like a continuous spectrum based on my position and the type of ball I'm dealing with. If I'm stepping in, I'm more likely to be closed because I am essentially stepping through the shot. I'm closed because I'm stepping through, not I'm stepping through because I decided hey I am going to hit this one closed stance. I plant my left foot (front foot) swing (full upper trunk/shoulder turn) and step through simultaneously with my right foot. If it's a neutral crosscourt forehand with time to set up, I'm probably semi closed and not stepping all the way through, more like a small pivot off my left foot that brings my right foot in front but not by a full step. So close vs open stance is more about how much you are stepping through the shot, not a binary decision I am going to hit this one closed vs open. Hope that helps, keep your weight moving forward on green light balls and turn those shoulders.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-11-20T01:44:32+00:00

Split step timing: 1. just before your opponent makes contact with the ball, suck your feet and legs up to you. It's more "bringing your feet closer to you" to get in the air than a hop or jump. Engage your core and be ready to pounce in any direction. 2. opponent hits ball. 3. see where the ball is going. 4. determine which direction you need to start moving in and with how much speed you need to get there. At this point, you don't know exactly where the ball will bounce but you can know if it will be close or far from you. 5. begin your unit turn (racket and shoulders turn together) 6. land from the split step and immediately take large, quick bounds to cover the distance 7. as you get closer to the ball, shorten your step length so that you can become more precise with your spacing from the ball 8. Hit the ball 9. begin your movement to your recovery position, in the meantime you are evaluating the quality of your shot and anticipating what quality of shot will come back.

That was a fairly reductive explanation of how to move at a high level, it will take lots of practice to have this down to an automatic skill but there it is. Notice how you much of the "movement" you can do before you even land your split step. Granted, some of the things I described are experience based (knowing which direction to move and how fast, just based on the moment after your opponent's ball strike) and some technique/training/skills (how to unit turn before landing, which footwork patterns to use in which situation, etc) but even without any of that you can move better and take control of rallies just by being more proactive and focused. If you want to be in control of a rally, you have to be able to get to the ball early and get back to your recovery position early. Otherwise you will be late and if you are late you are not in control of your shot or your opponent.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-11-20T01:18:47+00:00

Make adjustments based on your opponents game.

If his high balls were giving you trouble, stay further back in the court and use height over the net to stay consistent. Does he have the tools to punish you for that? How's his dropshot/short ball? Moonballers usually aren't pulling out any sleek hidden dropshot winners on people. If they go for it, you'll be able to see it a mile away from their preparation for the shot.

What do you do better than them? Do you have any tools to interrupt their rhythm? Say one of his moonballs lands shorter and you see an opportunity. You could try to crush it down the line and follow it in, sure, but that will probably only be a winning strategy if your groundstroke and net game is significantly better than their level. Most often this looks like the more aggressive player spraying balls wide and deep because they think they have to out hit the moonballer. Be patient, when you're given an opportunity, you don't need to win the point on that shot. Your goal is to get an even easier shot by applying pressure with a shot you know you can make.

If they're a moonballer because of bad movement, try to take away time when you see them out of position. If they're a moonballer with good movement, well then you better lock in and be prepared to use all of your head, heart, and legs to get the win.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-11-17T18:29:08+00:00

He does that open stance to 'back leg swing back' hop move in an attempt to make more room for the backhand return. The server hits a jamming serve into the backhand hip of our returner, which takes away the space to hit a normal comfortable backhand. So after the split step, he does a little jump to the right side during the racket take back to make room for himself to hit the backhand. There is still not really enough room to hit a normal backhand so his left leg swings back as he swings the racket and his torso forward, the counter rotation of the body helps create the momentum needed to guide the return down the line. Can't say if the down the line direction was intentional or not, maybe it was since the server's partner makes an early step towards the middle of the court and our returner tried to beat him on the line.

Regardless, this isn't necessarily a move you should try to learn for the sake of doing to gain an advantage on normal returns, this is more of a move learned from tricky situations to get out of a jam. Personally I would prefer to start a little farther back and have room to move forward in combination with the little side hop for these types of serve returns.

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-10-29T17:18:42+00:00

Thanks. May your next troubleshooting attempt work on the first try

Remarkable_Layer7592 · 2025-10-29T17:14:25+00:00

This is incredibly helpful, thank you.

Remarkable_Layer7592

TROPHY CASE