Kick Serve I The Best Tennis Serve Stance

Having the proper stance is key to generate massive topspin on your kick serve like the pros. Hence, I recommend to avoid using a pinpoint stance, where you bring your back foot up. I  believe that it’ll limit your ability to turn your shoulders properly, making it very difficult to hit a kick serve. Thus, you’ve got to get you set up in the right stance and there are variations that I’ll cover today.

Tennis Serve Platform Stance

Why? Because when you slide your foot back, you’ll be able to get a great shoulder turn. As a result, you’ll easily hit an amazing kick serve like Roger Federer. When I set players up in the correct serve stance, they immediately improve their shoulder turn and first move. Moreover, their  trophy position, toss position, and the ball position on the toss enhances as well. As a result, they improve the ability to get that huge topspin where the ball jumps off the court.

The tennis serve stance is often so overlooked. I hear many tennis coaches talking about the toss, keeping your head up, using your legs and all that stuff is great. However, if you’re not set up correctly, it’s gonna be very difficult to develop a pro tennis kick serve. Hence, what I like to do is get my players into a platform stance.

I recommend having the toe of the back foot in line with the heel of the front foot. If you want to slide it back even more, even better. Once you’re in this position, your body will be able to turn easily. Thus, when you hit the ball, you’re more turned, and you’re facing towards the net post. If you think of the best kick serves of all time, I mean, Pete Sampras, he used a platform stance.

John McEnroe Stance

If you can’t hit a slicer, it’s very uncommon for a player from this stance to be able to hit a great slice serve. Thus, you have to balance the two and get in the stance that allows you to hit a great tennis kick or topspin serve.

Other players such as John Isner and Nick Kyrgios are still able to get massive topspin on their kick serve with a pinpoint stance. However, I believe that when you move that back foot up into the side of the front foot, it makes it more difficult.

Going back to what we started with, the best tennis serve stance, I believe is a platform. You’ll have the toe in line with the heel of the front foot, the back toe, or even slide back a little bit more..

I hope that you enjoyed today’s article and acquired valuable insights on the best tennis serve stance to hit a tennis kick serve easily.

By Jeff Salzenstein, Founder Tennis Evolution

Jeff is a former top 100 ATP player and USTA high performance coach committed to helping players and coaches all over the world improve.

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