Your Strokes: Ching Lee Serve

Why is Ching unable to flatten out his serve?

This month in Your Strokes we take a look at the serve of Ching Lee. Ching is a 4.0 level player, looking to take his game to the next level. When I first saw him play, I quickly realized how much potential this player had. With a natural athleticism and great flexibility, Ching already had pieces of a 4.5 level game. But like many athletic players stuck at the 4.0 level, technical deficiencies were holding back his potential.

I video taped all of Ching’s shots, but the serve was the stroke that he really wanted to juice up. He told me he wasn’t able to hit a hard first serve, so players could attack his serve and quickly put him on the defensive. He also wanted to be able to get a few "free points" a match to give him that edge that other players had over him.

On the court I took a look at his serve, and saw that he was generating a lot of spin on his serve, and had a nice motion with a deep racket drop, but he wasn’t able to flatten out the ball at…