The path the racket travels along with the angle of the racket are two major factors that determine the direction of the tennis ball. In today’s lesson, Brady demonstrates how the angle of the racket at contact will greatly dictate the direction on a serve.
Published on 04/13/2017 by Brady
Hi Alles sehr gut erklärt.
VG Dieter
I totally agree with your email where you said “You’re in COMPLETE control…which is great. However the slightest change can make a big difference. And in my opinion, you need to focus almost exclusively on one factor in order to control the direction of the ball.” However, I disagree with your “one factor”. Especially at the recreational level, it’s hard enough to be consistent with placing the ball toss and then to master the angle of the strings on top of that inconsistency I think is virtually impossible for the recreational player to master. I think the simplest “one factor” to get noticeable control of the serve’s direction is to adjust the angle of the feet placement. Assuming most players position their feet relative to each other to form a consistent stance when preparing for a serve, what I’m suggesting is to rotate this stance to the left or right while practicing until the player can consistently hit a target, at which point the player can note the orientation to the target. Then this stance/target orientation can be used for any target from where ever the stance is taken along the baseline and whether the target is in the deuce or ad side of the court. The beneficial thing about this one factor is that it’s controlled when the body is in a static position rather than when the body is in motion and therefore can be mastered regardless of where the target is. When pausing your video when preparing for each of your 3 targets, I noticed that you adjusted your stance fractions of an inch to the right as you changed targets
Liked your analysis!
I simply do not have the feel to sense the small difference in racket angle in that fraction of a second between the racket being on edge coming up and when I make contact. I have worked on it quite a bit. I get a lot of variation in start direction that is not what I am trying to achieve. I can do it a bit more successfully on my second serves because everything is just a bit slower. But on my first serves, everything is happening too fast and I don’t have that much control. So I have to just am them all at the center of the box. My natural variability creates some out wide and some T serves. But I really can’t control this