Roger Federer: Serve Part 2: Page 2

The contact is just at the front edge of the body.

Front to Back

There is one more important factor to consider in the placement of the toss.
This is the position of the ball on the front to back axis. "Toss the ball in front of you
for more power." That’s another common mantra in teaching. But if we look at Federer,
or any top server, we see that the contact point is barely in front of the body. If you
draw a line straight down from the ball toward the court, it’s roughly even with the edge
of the player’s face, or at most an inch or two further in front.

This makes perfect sense for a number or reasons. If the toss were significantly
further in front, the player would have to reach forward with the racket. This would lower the
contact point, decrease the margin of error crossing the net, and also make it more difficult
to create topspin. There are other reasons the contact point is normally not as far in the
court as is generally believed, which we’ll discuss below when we discuss leg position.

Body Rotation

We’ve seen that the top players extend…