View Full Version : Foot alignment and body turn in serving

10-27-2009, 01:13 PM
One thing I have always been a bit confused is the relationship among ball toss, body turn, and serve direction. I'm a right hander. It seems to me that if ball toss is about the same on ad-court and deuce-court, then the amount of body turn needed is quite different. Is this right?

Here are some graphs which try to illustrate where I toss, how I align my foot, and where my body is facing when I hit the ball. I move my feet to a pin point stance before hitting the ball.

Don't laugh at my hard-made graphs. :)

Three main questions:

1. Is there anything wrong with my stance (including feet alignment, toss position, etc etc)?

2. I have trouble to serve wide from deuce court. It seems that I need to turn my body even more. But if that's true, why don't people maintain the angle between the serve direction and body direction (see the two arrows in the graphs below). Wouldn't that be more consistent?

3. My topspin serve works fine from the ad court, but I often dump the ball into the net from the deuce court. Is there anything you do differently for topspin serve on deuce court?

Thanks very much!



10-27-2009, 02:31 PM
when i changed my serve to something more respectable in terms of pace and kick, i remember hearing the advice: orient yourself toward the right side net post (for right handers) for serving to either deuce or ad side.
i ended up having all sorts of problems serving to the deuce side until i started orienting my body so that i faced the same # of degrees away from the service box. that way, the motion is the same for me for both sides, because my orientation is the same relative to the target. does this make sense?
for example, serving the ad side, i face the right side net post. serving deuce side, i face several feet to the left of the right side net post

10-27-2009, 04:02 PM
apor, I do think what you're doing makes logical sense - that's why I asked the question. But obviously none of the pros are doing what we're thinking, so there must be a reason behind it, right?

10-27-2009, 06:09 PM
I think your stances are fine.
One thing though...In the deuce diagram, you will be prone to turn your body and serve cross court, because your backfoot is closer to the right doubles alley than your front foot.