How to Serve Like a King

One of the things about Roger Federer’s serve is that it’s one of the best in the game without being the fastest. Federer’s serve is a potent mixture of placement, variation, and deception. The question is, how exactly is Federer able to serve so precisely and so deceptively? Taking into account the countless hours of practice he and all professionals have put into refining the serve, the key lies in the utter simplicity of his service motion.

One thing that Federer does remarkably well during his service motion is hold his head up through the point of contact. Many servers, even good ones at the professional level, in their quest to extract every last ounce of power from their deliveries, will jerk down into the point of contact. While this may cause the arm to accelerate through the hitting zone, it is disadvantageous for two major reasons:

1) It’s hard to reproduce.
The erratic nature of jerking a part of the body quickly (in this case, the head) makes it hard to reproduce a consistent delivery, which is a key component to having an accurate, directable serve. A fluid, simple delivery is easier to reproduce than a herky-jerky, complicated one. When you’re serving break point down, do you need that extra moving part breaking down on you?

2) You have a narrower service window.
Pulling the head down quickly has a tendency to cause the rest of the body to come down, which rules out making contact with the ball at optimal height, which in turn decreases the angles to which the server has access within the service box. In essence, what you think you “gain” in pace, you give up in terms of angle and, as a result, how far you can move the returner off his base. Pulling the head down early effectively makes you “shorter,” and your serve will be less effective. Roger Federer’s serve is incredibly effective in doing what he use it to do — pull the opponent wide off the court on both sides so that he can set up a penetrating forehand. This is why Federer much prefers primarily to ‘V-serve’ (serve wide to both sides, in the manner of the letter ‘V’) — his basic service game plan is structured in this manner. This is possible because Federer is very good and consistent with making contact while retaining an optimal angle above the net for his height, and he is able to optimize this due to his simple yet effective technique, which includes keeping the head up and creating that ‘extension.’

So there you have it. These are two major, major disadvantages to not keeping your head up as you serve. Aside from speculation of injury-causing attributes for which this site is not qualified to make, these two reasons alone are more than enough to drive home the point of how crucial it is to keep the head up when serving. After all, any tennis professional worth his or her salt will tell you it’s important to keep your head up, but they may not articulate for you why it’s so important other than, that’s what’s in the textbook. No! The major advantages you will gain from keeping the head up, aside from the “extension” to which Mary Carillo alludes, are that doing so will aid the consistency of the serve and the ability to reach all parts of the service box, which combined will have a dramatic effect on the effectiveness of anyone’s serve.

So remember: resist the temptation to artificially force the creation of power. Remember that power lies in the nexus of proper articulation of two things: timing and leverage. Keep the head up and finish high, and let gravity do the rest.