Sunday, November 27, 2011

Rediscovering The Slice Serve

A big win for me last week at my club!

I played the number one player on the club's ladder, someone who I haven't beaten in a few years.

As usual, I'm giving up about 20 years and these younger bucks tend to have two handed backhands and good returns off the backhand side.

Of course, this is a problem for me as my favorite weapon is the big serve to the backhand side, hoping for a winner or at least a weak return.

What's been happening the last few years is that guys have been standing way back to return my serve similar to the way clay courters like Nadal return. And, unless you can hit the perfect spot, everything is coming back.

I recognized this a few years ago, and started working on my slice serve in both the deuce and ad court.
It's not as easy as it looks if you want to hit it with good direction and good disguise. Experience has taught me that if you make a mistake and hit a mediocre slice serve, you might get a blistering forehand return back at your feet.

You can play with your toss by moving it a little to the right and see if you're opponent is observant enough to notice this. If he isn't then you can just hit more slice by tossing further to the right, but ultimately you'll want to hit the slice off the same toss that you hit your flat serve with.

And, now back to the match.

As I went up to serve, I noticed as usual that my opponent was standing way back to help him return off the backhand side. But, as he positioned himself, I could see that he wouldn't be able to cover a good slice serve especially in the deuce court.

So, I began hitting every first serve to his forehand in both the deuce and ad court. I moved my toss a little to the right and was very conscious of hitting the right side of the ball without opening up too early.

I also served and volleyed behind it to take away any floating returns.

I probably won about 80% of the points in the deuce court which made it pretty easy to hold. That put a lot of pressure on his serve and , even good players get tight, when they feel like to have to hold because they're not going to break.

As I've said the trick is to try and hit the slice with the same toss and same motion as the down the middle serve in the deuce court and the wide serve in the ad court.

Here is an incredible video of Pete Sampras hitting a slice serve ace in the deuce court. Notice where the ball crosses the net ( about halfway between the center and the sideline) and where the ball hits the court ( a couple of feet up from the interestion of service line and sideline)

Sampras Slice Serve

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