How To Hit The Perfect Slice Serve In Tennis In 3 Simple Steps
How To Hit The Perfect Slice Serve In Tennis In 3 Simple Steps
In this tennis serve lesson, Top Tennis Training coach Simon Konov will help you hit the perfect slice serve in tennis.
The slice serve in tennis is one of the most effective ways to start a tennis point on serve for both right and left handed players.
If executed correctly, a good slice serve will open the court up on the deuce side for a right hander and the advantage side for a left hander.
The tennis slice serve is also a great weapon to use when going down the “T” on the advantage side for right handers and also for jamming players into the body on both sides of the tennis court.
The key to imparting good amounts of spin on the ball is the angle of the racket face at contact. For a typical flat serve you would want to hit the ball more or less flat on with the string bed to gain the most amount of power from pronation.
For a slice serve however we want to hit the ball on the top right hand side of the ball (top left for left handed tennis players).
If the ball was a clock face, at impact for the tennis slice serve we would want to hit around 1-2 o’clock. This will give us good levels of spin but also allow the ball to dip down into the service box. Some coaches will say to hit the ball at 3 o’clock but if you add any real power to that serve it would drift wide as there is no dip on the serve.
3 Steps To Hitting The Perfect Tennis Slice Serve
The first step is using the correct service grip. This is the continental grip, also known as the chopper or hammer grip. This tennis grip will allow you to use supination and pronation on your tennis serve which in turn will give you good control of the racket face prior to, during and after contact. For the slice serve we want to approach the ball with the side of the racket and open the strings during the contact zone to the ideal position for the slice serve to happen. If we approach the ball with the strings already facing forwards, towards the net, we will not be able to slice that serve effectively and it will turn into a flat serve.
The ball toss and contact point on the ball. When you are just starting to learn the slice serve it is a good idea to toss the ball more to the right so you can really feel the motion of “cutting the ball”. This will allow you to truly experience this service motion and your muscle memory for this serve will start to engage. However as you progress with this serve, it’s better to try to keep the same ball toss for all your serves to increase your disguise on the serve. The more you progress with your tennis game, the stronger your opponents will be and they will be able to read the different serves if you are constantly changing your ball toss on serve.
Throwing your body into the serve. For a truly great slice serve we want to imagine that our right shoulder will hit the ball. This will help us to rotate fully as we serve and will give us the best possible angle and spin on the slice serve. If we stay side on to the net on the slice serve, we prevent ourselves from using the full range of motion to achieve a perfect slice serve in tennis.
