Can You Have a World-Class Tennis Serve With a Bad Toss?

Can you really have a world-class serve with a bad toss? And that's your best serve there. That's actually a world-class serve. If you thought the toss was the most important thing in a tennis serve, well, you are wrong. And Paul Tornquist, who is the director of tennis here at the West Vancouver Tennis Clubs, is going to show us exactly why. And it's not what you might think. Every video I see on YouTube talks about toss, toss, toss. But you say, not toss. Correct. If not toss, then what? Well, a good wrist snap can correct a bad toss. First thing I'm going to say is that I'm not going to discount the importance of the toss. The toss can be incredibly important, especially at the high level. You know, Pete Sampras was known as having the greatest serve because you couldn't read his toss by having the toss in the same spot every single time. In my experience, you know, especially at the club level, is people obsessing about the toss. They're just obsessed, obsessed. And by the time they're ready to hit, they got nothing left. But the toss, again, you know, when we're dealing with sun and wind and different things like that, we're going to have to change the toss up. We can't have our regular toss all the time. The last part of the kinetic chain is the wrist. So we're going to wind up here for the serve here. And at the last part of the kinetic chain is the wrist. We're going to release the wrist. OK. Now, if I lock my wrist, even though my toss is perfect, we're not going to have a good serve. It's going to be just really horrible. So you can see right here. I'll give you an example here. And it's maybe a little bit tough to have the perfect toss with the sun here. But I'm going to try to have the perfect motion here. And I lock my wrist. And what's going on? Well, my toss was perfect. OK, so now here's another example where, let's say, I get my toss and it's off a little bit, maybe too far behind my head. And I snap it just right, release it just right. You see, that actually was a great serve there. Right in the corner here. So my wrist corrected my incorrect toss. And that's ultimately going to dictate the quality of the serve. After what you said, I'm not too sure. I don't think people would disagree with you. But the thing is, how do they do it? I mean, it's not that easy to just use your wrist and save shots, right? Well, I think it is, you know, to be honest. I mean, it depends on your understanding of the serve mechanics. So, you know, if the toss is a little bit off, as a decent player, we were able to make adjustments. So it's the same thing on the serve. We can make some adjustments. Coach Paul had me hit a few serves first to see how I was using my wrist and how relaxed my grip was on the racket. We'll do a couple more here. Well, now that you mentioned the wrist, I'm starting to use more wrist. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot of things we can work on right here. So it's a little bit tight for me. So we want to have a really loose wrist. Right now, we want to put this pinky right there at the very bottom. All right, yes. And that's going to help create a looser wrist. And the other thing, one of the most important things is height in tennis. Every inch taller you are, you get extra power and you get extra control, actually. And it's quite remarkable how one inch can make a huge difference. They actually make rackets that are an inch longer. And they did studies on it. And people's serve consistency went up by 10 to 15 percent by being just an inch longer in the racket. So now when you choke up on the racket, if you can choke up, you know, you're like, how tall are you, Alex? 183, which is like you're one, I don't know, 175 right now. OK, so we want to hold it at the bottom for maximum control and maximum power. I mean, that was so much more relaxed already. Yeah, and it had more like speed on the ball. I think just by coming down here, it forces me to not death grip it because I can't. So it just naturally releases more. Absolutely. So that already we made, in my opinion, that was your best serve there. It was the loosest, you know, less tension on your arm and your shoulders. And it's like I said, it's the kinetic chain. And that last part of the kinetic chain is to just let that wrist go. I was really inconsistent with how I used my wrist on the serve. So Coach Paul showed me this simple drill that completely isolates the wrist. And it finally helped me understand how it should work. We can get down on the ground here. You can see we can move over to the side, please. And I can just put one knee on the ground here. And from here, I'm just, you see. But with players, you're going to find what happens is if they use their shoulder and their arm, they're going to go smash. He's got a brand new Yonex racket. I don't want you to bust it up here. So you see what I finish here. I'm just isolating the wrist. Right. And you can see I'm not even close to using the ground. So this is an exercise just to get the wrist going. OK, excellent. Yeah, so let's see if you can get a few in. Releasing. You released it quite nicely there. Release. Ah, that was great. Release. I mean, that was better than you standing up. Yeah. Release. How about that last serve? Was the toss way off? Yeah, way off. It was way off. And, you know, you saved it with a good wrist snap. So see if you can get that same feeling, just letting that wrist release on that impact point. Oh, the sun. Right in the sun. Yeah, so again, you might have to lower the toss on a sunny day like that. Oh, fantastic. How much pain was that? That was like 30% energy. Yes. Oh, excellent. Again, that toss was way off behind your head. You actually jumped backwards there, and your wrist kind of made the correction there. Yes. So easy to control. I mean, I'm just imagining almost like I'm only using my wrist. Perfect. Yeah. Perfect. If you're finding the video useful, hit like and subscribe. Click on our playlist to watch your favorite videos back-to-back and join our YouTube membership to support our channel. Everything's in the description down below. Now back to the video. Excellent. Now that I was finally getting the hang of using my wrist, Coach Paul showed me how to control the depth of my serve and become much more consistent. So now here's the easiest service lesson of your life. There's four key words. Hit up, snap down. So if the ball's in the net, what am I going to do? Hit up. The ball's too far long, what am I going to do? Snap down. Wrist is making all the corrections. So you can see that ball was too far along there. So your coach says, hey, have a loose wrist. So I go to the court, I loosen up my wrist. Well, that ball's way out. What's my correction? Snap down. So now I'm going to bring it down. Now if I hit the net, what am I going to do? I'm going to hit up. And I'm trying to find the range in my wrist. Okay. So what I say to you, Alex, is you can make mistakes, but let's not make the same mistake twice. Okay, got it. So that was too high. Now I'm going to snap down. With a loose wrist. Okay, now we're going to hit up. You're still a little bit locked there in the wrist. Hit up. And that was just perfect connection there. So now that I understand how to use the wrist, kind of like wrist first to control, how do I start applying this once I want to start adding some power? To create the ultimate power, we're going to have to release that wrist on impact. So the exercise I want you to do here, so we're going to, we can even start from here if you like. And on the point of impact, I want to see if you can take your bottom three fingers off and just finish like this. Okay. And your hand should actually ultimately be above your head. Okay. Now I'm creating a greater range. It's like the elastic band theory. The further I can pull it back, the further I can throw it further. If I have a death grip, I'm locked up here and my range is from here to here. So we're going to start here. Yes. We're going to reach up, release the bottom three fingers and finish just like that with your hand above your head. And we just isolate the wrist. You can see what actually happens here when we release the bottom three fingers. Okay. Do you see that perfect pronation? Yes. It actually helps the racket just pronate right there. Right. It's actually a very natural motion. Now, if you take the racket off your hand and you go like, just go loose and you see how you can see the front of your hand. Now, okay. Be loose. Let go. And now we see the back of your hand. That's the pronation. Right. That's how we're creating that speed here by pronating the wrist right there. So this is an advanced drill. I feel like if you can understand this exercise, now you understand the serve, how to release the wrist. And you see you're moving your whole arm. I don't want you moving your arm. Just reach up and isolate the wrist. That's the wrong demonstration. Again. Do that again. Yes. Go. Yes. There. Okay. There. Good. Release it completely. I don't know why this is so hard for me. We'll try. Let's just see. This is tough. This concept is tough. It's an advanced concept. So I don't know. Let's see if you can get this one here. Okay. Let me try it. Let me try it my way one time and see. Okay. Absolutely. No. So you're not releasing right now. You can see that if you actually release the wrist correctly, and we pronated, when you finish, I should see the back of your hand come down. You can see here, you see I'm coming down with the back edge. That's pronated. You know what? Maybe we went a little bit too far here, right? Because you were serving so well by just relaxing the bottom three fingers or just not even worrying about that, just relaxing your wrist, either hitting up or snapping down. You know, as a coach, we got to just dial it back again. You know, I don't know. You've been playing so well lately here. I was kind of pushing the envelope a little bit here. So let's just go back to not having that death grip. So we started the video by holding the racket quite a bit lower here. And just be loose. Just be loose. And that was excellent. Now it's a little far long. Just bring it down. Oh, the sun. And that was excellent. I didn't even see it. I closed my eyes. Yeah. I mean, you just let everything go, you know? Okay. Now hit up. Oh, that's like way out, right? So let's going to bring it down now. Excellent. Okay. Can you tell me about that? Was that what you're loosest, would you say? I'm a lot looser. Yeah. It's not. I don't think it's the loosest I can be. Yeah. But it's pretty loose. And pretty good speed there. The thing is, it looks effortless to me. Ah, that was super loose, eh? Yeah. Good. I think I understand. Yes. Ah, just go for it. That was the best. That was loose and fast. That was fantastic. Now we're talking. Now, a lot of times you serve that ball way out. You got tremendous speed on that. Yeah. You know, one thing as a coach, what I would say, man, that is just awesome. My students like, oh man, what are you talking about? That serve is way out, you know? I'm more interested in the process right now. We're talking a fraction of a second of bringing the wrist down a little quicker. And that serves world class. And I'm only using 30% strength right now. So now, like I said, if you can do exactly the same thing. And now just bring the wrist down a little quicker. We go back to the four most important words. Hit up, snap down. We're keeping it super simple for you. So same looseness. Let's bring it down here. Got it. Yeah. Easy. At this point, yeah, I'd probably say just go home now. It's just too good to be true. One thing I learned from this and now how I'm doing it better. I think it's very important that you need to get into this accelerating position earlier. One of the reasons I was death gripping is I came up and then I didn't get in this position early enough. And then I try to do this really fast. Yeah, yeah. Made me death grip. Yes, too much. See, that's just incredible. Don't think too much. Throw it up and hit it. I can do that even better. Yes. Yeah, I definitely probably want to catch that one. And that's your best serve there. That was actually incredible. That hit in and it went almost halfway up the back of the fence. Right. That's actually a world-class serve. When you can get the ball in and it still rises and hits halfway up the back of the fence. Okay, there you go. Yeah. So that's how you master the serve. If you guys enjoyed this lesson, make sure to like, comment, subscribe. Check out Paul and West Vancouver Tennis Club in the link down below.