How to Correct The Waiters Serve In Tennis

Author:

Feel Tennis Instruction

Keywords:

Tennis (Sport),Serve,waiter's serve,technique,correct,fix,error,mistake

Subtitles:

you you opening of the racket face or the so-called waiter serve is one of the most common mistakes when serving and it's not easy to correct so today I want to show you a few drills on how to correct the waiter serve and get the right serve where the racket travels on edge and then you pronate and hit the correct serve so first thing to keep in mind is that even the pros they open up the racket face slightly so I'm going to show you two clips now from Roger Federer and from jo-wilfried tsonga so take a look and you will see that even they at some point they open the racket face slightly up to the sky so the racket is not perfectly on the edge to the whole swing so maybe that will give you a little piece of mind first you now before we go correcting the waiters serve we have to look at the reasons there are a couple of reasons that are intertwined together and are making this Gordian knot from which is very hard to get out so the reasons are here's the first reason the first reason is mental so why the waiter serve happen is because the player wants to make sure that they're going to hit the ball on the string so when they toss the ball they want to make sure that they're going to hit the ball on the strings that also means they don't trust the pronation or they haven't worked on the pronation when you do when you pronate you're actually going on the ball with the edge for a long time and then at the last moment the racquet turns correctly right so if you want to keep the serve that way you have to trust the pronation you have to trust that the last split-second before the contact the racket is going to turn so in order to do that you have to work on the pronation there is yet another reason why the waiter serve happens and that is because we subconsciously feel or think that if we keep the racket on the edge and not open it up we're going to hit ourselves in the head because we feel that there's no space we're going like this on the serve and you feel okay the racket is going to hit me in the head so I have to open up my wrist my hand and now the racket has enough space has enough space behind me so it doesn't hit me in the head so if you've been serving with the waiter sir for a while you have another little problem to deal with and that's your muscle memory your arm is now trained especially the forearm is now trained and the hand is trained to open up at the wrong moment so when you're going for the serve you're just going to open up and you won't even be aware of it so the first thing you have to do is you have to teach your arm to go on the edge a lot so the best drill I know is that you serve for a while you just do the serve motion and you just make sure that the racket all the time travels on the edge so in this in this part of the serve you're thinking edge one so you're thinking this edge then you turn the racket in you're thinking this edge so racket is going with this edge then you turn your shoulder and the racket goes out with the edge so from this angle is this edge I turn the racket this edge and you have to find a way to go to make it go behind your head you can feel like you're combing your hair so the racket can be can go quite close so this edge now edge and then another edge and you can do the follow through on the right side of the body like this so just do the continuous motion like this and focus on keeping the racket on the edge you have to do this quite a lot because you have to retrain your forearm in your hand because they will want to do like this your hand is just going to do like this you'll have to really monitor your hand and make sure that you're going edge edge edge the next progression of the edge swing where you follow through on the right side is to follow through on the left side but again you're going with this edge when you follow through on the right side you just go with this edge you just lead with this edge when you follow to on the left side this pronation will automatically happen here if you're thinking about this edge so all the time it's edge edge here then you just pronate an edge here when you take the racket out and you go again edge here edge here edge here as here so this is the most universal exercise that I know that helps a lot with the waiter serve and it's going to work until you toss the ball in the air but that's your first step your first step is to make it work when there's no ball when the ball comes your subconscious is going to fire and it's one I don't I want to make sure that you hit the ball so that will be another step to tackle the next progression from the edge drill is to do the edge drill but serve only with three fingers because I've seen often times when I give the players this drill they hold the racket so tight and they want to make sure that the racket goes on the edge that they lose the main idea of the serve which is to let the racket go to hit the ball so try and do this with three fingers so from this angle you're trying to let the racket go and feel how the racket drops here in the backswing drops behind the back and you just turn the shoulders and you come out with the edge and you go again so what's very important to feel is that the racket let me show from close-up so when you're going in the backswing your hand is used to opening up like this but you have to teach the racket rather to go like this is to go between these two fingers so the racket needs to drop here between these two fingers so when you're going in the backswing the racket needs to drop here so you can try a few and just slide the racket drop here like this so you will feel the direction of where the racket needs to go so when you're going in the back swing the racket goes between the fingers so the hand can stay in this position otherwise your hand is going to open up like this so when you go behind your back like this you must feel where are these two fingers and now you will see the reason why I don't hit myself in the head although that's the initial fear always for the players they feel like I'm going to hit myself in the head I won't hit myself in the head because my hand is slightly at an angle so when I drop the racket between in this direction so between these two fingers that's at a different angle so it's not at this angle but it's actually at this angle so there's there's enough space so even if I'm going like this there's more than enough space between the racket in my head so I can go like this why can i still need to drop the racket between these two fingers so that's one of the keys to feeling the difference between opening the racket face and not opening your hand and just letting the racket go in this direction one of the reasons for the waiter serve is also orienting towards the course too early so when you're serving with the waiter serve you're thinking very linear your you're thinking okay I'm going to put my racket here here's the ball there's the targets you're thinking just very linear in a more advanced serve the path of the racket is slightly more curved so even though I want to serve there I'm actually accelerating this way most of the serve I'm accelerating this way so it's very important that you're aware of your desire to orient toward the court too early so if you want to orient toward the court world your racket is going to open up just by itself so you must make sure that you stay longer sideways when you're tossing the ball you have to stay longer sideways and you're thinking more sideways on the ball which brings me to the next step I highly recommend that you do a lot of slice and spin serving because when you do a slice or a spin serve especially from this side towards the advantage side you're not going to open up the racket so much because you're imagining hitting the ball more from the sides you're imagining hitting the ball more like this so when you're hitting the ball like this you're leading with the edge the next drill you can do to correct the waiter serve is to try and hit the ball with the edge so you're just serving the ball and you're trying to shoot the ball on the edge you might not hit every ball but it's just very important that you just keep going very relaxed on the edge and that's another way to to combat your muscle memory that wants to open up your racket too early so you just say no no I'm going to hit the ball on the edge hit the ball on the edge and then the next step will be just to change your mind at the last minute so hitting on the edge and then changing your mind would look something like this I'm going to try and hit the ball on the edge first it's a good one one more I'm going to try and hit the ball on the edge I'm going to try and hit the ball on the edge I'm going to try and trick myself I'm going to try and hit the ball on the edge and just split second before I hit the ball I'm going to allow the racket to pronate or I will pronate so I'm going to go edge edge edge edge change I'm going to go edge edge edge edge change so that's another good exercise to deal with the waiter serve another very effective exercise to work on your waiter serve is serving by defense so just position yourself about two feet from the fence and do the serve and if you do the serve correctly you won't hit the fence so in case of the waiter serve when you want to open the racket face too early you're going to hit the fence and that's how you're going to tell very early very quickly what your if you're doing the serve crack your in correctly so see if you can thread the needle meaning thread the serve between the back and defense into this space there's another benefit to this exercise in that this one it's going to tell you if you rotates too quickly into the surf because again you're going to hit the fence so if I'm going like this and I just rotate a little bit too early I'm going to hit the fence so just try and find this the right timing when to rotate so see if you can put the racket into this space and take it out without hitting the fence I just want to show quickly the importance of the muscle memory so when I serve with my right hand I'm a right-hander then pronating on the ball is very easy but if I try and serve with my left then I'm very weak I don't feel any pronation and that's because my left forearm left arm has not been trained so the information on how to do the pronation even though I know how to do the pronation I cannot do it because I haven't trained it so you can see that it's very weak I'm doing the pronation but it's very weak compared to this side where with the pronation I can hit the ball very fast so that's why it's very important that you train the pronation you can't just you know learn it intellectually you can't just okay this is the pronation and now it's not it's going to work it's not going to work because it's a slightly unnatural movement you have to learn it so you have to use certain exercises to work on the pronation and that's going to be the topic of the next video