The Serve Toss

The serve is one of the most important aspects of the game of tennis and is probably the most difficult stroke to perfect. Even accomplished players struggle with making their serve more of a weapon in their game.

The one aspect of the serve that frustrates most club players is the toss. In this article, I want to show how the toss can improve by demonstrating the role of the tossing arm and its mechanics in tossing the ball.

Racket Arm

The first thing to look at how the racket arm effects the toss. The racket arm and tossing arm must work together. There must be a rhythm between the two.

There are different ways to do this. The old style is both arms move downward toward the ground before raising up together.

This technique takes far more coordination to work well. It can create some real timing issues for a club player trying to improve their toss. One of those issues is that it tends to create a racket head lag which often entails the need for a higher toss to allow the racket head time to catch up with the motion.

And a higher toss is far more…