Level Up Your Serve: Toss

Want to improve your serve? Of course you do, we all do. A good serve wins points, but a great serve turns matches in your favor. While it's difficult to get all aspects of the serve to work together in time, improving the toss location is a good starting point to leveling up your serve. 

That's too high. No, that's too low. Toss it behind your head. Toss it to your right... Has your coach said this, maybe even all in the same lesson? The list goes on and on and on. The truth is, we overcomplicate the toss. Often, we overcomplicate it by tossing the ball way too high. What if instead of calling it a toss, which implies adding force, we called it a lift instead. Lifting the ball into position instead of tossing it. The truth is, the ball does not need to be higher than our arm and racket lifted above our head. That's likely somewhere between 4 and 6 feet depending on your height and arm length. It does not take much effort at all to lift a 2-ounce tennis ball into the right position. So instead of calling it a toss, let's think of it as a lift.

Now that's a great starting point to making it all come together. Toss Lift location is the second important aspect of improving the serve toss. The point of contact should be forward and to the right (for right-handers). Looking at biomechanics, the most efficient swing path for the serve has a contact point that is forward and to the dominant side. In order to lift the ball there, pretend your lifting arm is holding the ball in an elevator shaft: the ball can only go straight up and down. By isolating this motion, a lot less can go wrong in regard to getting your contact point forward and to the right (again, for right-handers). As this becomes more normal/natural, your non-dominant arm will actually not move straight up to release the ball, but actually in a "J" as your body rotates/coils to prepare for the serve. 

Practice your toss lift height and location to level up your serve and boost your game!