The Serve Toss

Changing the role of the tossing arm from the traditional down and up can improve the 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.

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 difficult to control. Even at the professional level this often creates tossing issues.

The arms start below the waist and move upward together.

The more modern way first made famous by Andy Roddick is to bring both arms up together. The arms start somewhere below the waist then moving upward together as the racket moves to the trophy position.

You see this with a lot of big servers today like John Isner. I believe it is the most efficient way to coordinate a good toss.

It is the simplest motion to coordinate the arms. Most club players have real problems with coordinating both arms at once and this technique is the simplest.

A few examples of today's players who use a version of this technique are Medvedev, Rublev, and the young rising American star, Korda. Since balance is a main component with serving, this more efficient way of raising the toss will help the club player achieve better balance in the trophy position and better control of the toss.

What does the toss arm do as the motion starts? The toss arm should extend into a straight arm position before raising up. This is crucial to a good toss.

The arm should then rise as a unit like a lever from the shoulder. The arm shouldn't be bent in any way from the start of the arm raise to the finish.

The tossing arm extends upward until it reaches a vertical position.

But the arm should not be tense in the straight position. Tension in the arm will cause the shoulder to lock up and restrict the lift of the arm to the proper finish position.

The other key component is to followthrough with the toss arm. This means that the arm should extend up until it reaches a vertical position from the shoulder after the release of the ball.

Once the ball is released then the arm continues to rise until it is in this vertical position. Like the importance of the followthrough in all strokes, the followthrough with the tossing arm is the key element to a well controlled toss.

The next question is what the hand's roll in is tossing the ball? The hand doesn't have any roll in tossing the ball.

You must think of the hand as an extension of the arm. The hand should never move from the wrist to raise the ball.

The movement of the hand to help raise the ball is a direct result of not following through with the toss arm to its full extended position.

Once the arm stops there is force needed to raise the ball. The arm stopping tooearly creates the need to bend the elbow or flicking the wrist to raise the ball to the proper height. This is the main downfall of all toss problems that the club player has with their toss.

The wrist has no roll in releasing the ball.

Many years ago, I had to have surgery on my elbow. To keep playing while my elbow was recovering, I started playing left-handed.

Like most new servers, my toss was erratic making my new lefty serve erratic. The toss was bad, but I was able to get it in and not double fault too much.

But I didn't have much power and I didn't have very good control of placement, mainly because of my poor toss consistency. I played a couple of local tournaments to test out my new lefty game and had some decent results.

A friend, who came to watch one of my matches, sent me a photo of my serve in the trophy position. My position didn't look too bad until I compared it to an old photo of my right handed serve.

Shoulder rotation is another benefit of an extended tossing arm.

My toss arm, at full extension, never rose above my shoulder. Like most club players I wasn't finishing my toss arm motion to full extension. Like a lot of players, I was using my elbow and wrist to raise the ball creating a toss that was not very consistent.

Since I was using my dominant arm to toss the ball you might think it would be easier to toss the ball correctly no matter what the technique, but that wasn't the case.

Fortunately for me, I didn't have to fix my lefty toss because my right arm improved, and I was able to go back to my right-handed serve. Unfortunately, club players don't have another serve to go to when their toss is bad.

The other benefit of having a fully extended toss arm is it creates both better shoulder rotation and the correct upward swing path through the ball. Visualize the racket passing up along the toss arm and over the hand at the top.

I find with a lot of club players don't really know what “hitting up" on the ball really means because their toss arm never reaches the appropriate vertical position. They see their arm as horizontal to the court which creates that swing path through the ball which is the improper swing path on the serve.

The release of the ball at forehead level.

The next important aspect of the toss is at what point does your hand release the ball? Often, the release point in erratic as well. Sometimes it is released too soon and sometimes it is released too late. The optimal point of release is around the forehead level.

Club players never get their arm to go that high. You may ask, though, why does the release point need to be that high?

The main reason it needs to be that high is the distance it travels from the release point to its peak. That distance is not that far, maybe one to three feet. The shorter the distance the ball travels to get to its optimum hitting position the easier it is to control.

Think about tossing a piece of waded up paper into a wastepaper basket. The closer you are to the target the easier it is to control to toss into the basket.

Boris Becker moaved both arms down and up together.

This principal is probably the most crucial aspect of a good toss. That is why dropping the toss arm down to begin the motion is the least effective way of tossing the ball. By raising both arms up initially in the motion it can help create greater success completing the toss arm movement to its full extended position.

Don't get me wrong, there have been great servers in the past who used the more traditional form in which both arms move down, both arms move up together—for example Boris Becker and Pete Sampras.

But I think that form was needed in the past to create momentum to speed up the arm swing to generate more power. The modern rackets today give players all the power they need with a shorter swing. The extra downward movement of the arms is no longer necessary.

If you look across the pros today, you will see many slight variations on this concept. Some will drop the arms more than others and some won't drop them at all. Usually, even at the pro level, the drop of their arms in the more traditional manner creates more issues with their toss. Denis Shapovalov is one good example of this.

Shapovalov is an example of a pro with a downward tossing arm drop and an inconsistent toss.

Over my many years of teaching, I've had many players come to me about their serve and particularly about their “bad" toss. The first thing I look at is the very first part of the motion. What are the arms doing to coordinate the toss? The first thing a player needs to do is get the toss arm to do the right thing.

So straighten the tossing arm and raise it up to the complete vertical position, with the palm of the hand facing the sky. Do this without the ball and without engaging the racket arm movement. This will feel strange and unnatural to most of you because you never do it when you serve.

Practice that until it starts to feel more natural. Then add the ball focusing on the same thing. Don't worry about where it goes when you release the ball. Get comfortable with this new motion.

The ball should come out of your fingers with little or no spin.

The next thing is to raise the racket to the trophy position and do more practicing raising the toss arm up to full extension. The next step is to raise both arms together again focusing on the toss arm reaching its full extension and the racket reaching the trophy position.

There shouldn't be any movement of the hand from the wrist or movement from the elbow. The ball should come out of your fingers like a knuckle ball, little or no spin.

Once you have become more comfortable with the motion of both arms start to practice the release point. Here it might be helpful if you or your coach videos the initial swing. Slow it down and see at what point the balls is released by the hand.

If the release is too low, then the toss will go too high and probably go away from you towards the net. If the toss is released to high the toss will be too low and go back over your head.

The next step is to set out targets for where the ball will land in front of you. If you've taken lessons before, your pro has probably done that to get the toss to be more accurate. You can use a cone or another racket as a target.

Once you start to put it all together you can start to hit the ball. Initially the serve timing will be off because the view of the court will be different.

Look at the sky above your hand and swing at that spot.

Before you were probably looking at the court straight ahead. Now, you'll be looking at the sky above your hand. Swing at that spot. The ball should be there more often now.

Too often, players want to play competitive matches too early in their development, which creates short cuts in learning a good serve motion. These short cuts often create poor toss arm technique and this in turn creates a poor toss. This leads to hitting poor tosses and bad serving performances.

This change takes time, but I often tell my students that extra time is worth it. Most changes like this will take anywhere from 3-6 months to see improvement.

The amount of time will really depend on how much time is spent practicing. Serving/tossing practice can be boring, but the payoff of having a better toss/serve is worth the practice.

The Serve Toss

Kerry Mitchell