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Nic Sabbatini: Hi, I am Nic Sabbatini, director of tennis at the beautiful Doral Arrowwood Hotel and today we’re going to go over the serve technique with the different components of the stroke to make sure that we learn and improve every area of the stroke in the proper way.
We’re going to start with what we call an eastern forehand grip. The way to find an eastern forehand grip - you can either pretend that you’re shaking hands with the racquet or you can just put the racquet on the ground and pick it up and naturally that should be a forehand grip. Er… to get more specific the knuckle of the index finger should be on top of the flat part of the grip.
The second step would be the proper stance which are very important to be able to maintain correct balance through the swing. So the stance will be… hips and shoulders would be sideways to the net, the feet will be shoulder-width apart, the right foot will be parallel to the baseline and my left foot… if I’m pretending that I have a clock, if I’m standing in the middle of a clock, my left foot will point at one o’clock. The racquet will start in front pointing at the net; ideally I don’t want the racquet too high or too low. Ideally we want to hold the ball with the tip of our fingers using two fingers and the thumb and now we’re going to divide the swing in three different steps.
On the first step we’re gonna take the racquet back and hang the racquet over your shoulder and feel the elbow point straight at the back fence creating 90 degrees with the body and the tricep[s].
On the second step we’re going to toss the ball which is probably one of the most challenging steps on a serve to be able to do consistently.
I want to toss the ball slightly in front of me and at one o’clock, that’s where naturally the right arm swings through so ideally that’s where I want to make contact with the ball. I’m going to bring my hips and shoulders round at the same time that I swing finishing with my weight on the left leg and my hips and shoulders square to the net.
So as a demonstration the… the base against… the stance… feet on the same line, feet under your shoulders, left foot at one o’clock, right foot at three o’clock, feeling comfortable, feeling that you can transfer your weight forward through the swing, three fingers on the ball, racquet pointing forward.
On the first step we take the racquet back until I make 90 degrees with my elbow and my body, and my elbow points straight back. Second step I’m gonna toss the ball at one, third step I’m gonna reach up, follow through facing the net, my racquet should follow through next to my left pocket and ideally at the beginning I want to hug to be able to maintain balance.
Okay, thank you very much for taking the time to listen to the tips that we went over on on the serve, I hope they’re useful for your game and um… we’ll see you next time, thanks again.
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