Serve Lesson I 3 Tennis Serve Tips To Fix The Pinpoint Stance
In this tennis article, I will reveal three tennis serve tips that will help you fix the pinpoint stance. Consequently, you can improve your tennis serve technique. The stance is one of the most important elements for building a world class tennis serve. Most junior, college, club, and professional tennis players use a pinpoint stance on their serves.
However, I have seen many mistakes being made that result in lack of serve rhythm, timing and tempo. Thus, they struggle to hit a great topspin serve and use it as a weapon to dominate their opponents.
If you have followed my coaching system, you know that I prefer to get into a solid platform stance. This is because you can push off of both feet effectively. . Nevertheless, I know many tennis players worldwide and at all levels who rather use a pinpoint stance on their serves. Therefore, I have decided to discuss it in more detail and share the common mistakes that may be preventing you from serving your best.
Tennis players may prefer having a pinpoint stance because they can move their back foot up. Hence, they feel like they have better rhythm and momentum. However, I consider that there are some problems that occur when you get into a pinpoint stance. Therefore, I wanted to discuss them and share three tennis serve tips that can help you transform your serve.
I have taught these concepts to hundreds of passionate players over the last fifteen years as a high performance coach. I am simply committed to share the tangible information that can allow you to become a better tennis player.
Are you ready to discover them? Let us get started.
The Platform Stance
First, I feel more things can go wrong with the pinpoint stance. As soon as you start moving your back foot, you are introducing an extra variable into the tennis serve. This is because you have to be able to sync up the movement of the back leg to the shoulder turn and toss.
On the contrary, with a platform stance you can get into a solid base and all you have to do is bend your knees and go. That is one of the reasons why I preferred it and adopted it late in my pro career. Consequently, I was able to drastically transform my tennis serve and increase the confidence on my whole game, which enabled me to break into the top 100.
I have noticed that various tennis players lose their shoulder turn over time when they are in a pinpoint stance. Instead of turning their shoulders, they have the tendency to move with their arms first. Hence, they struggle to develop proper rhythm, tempo, and power on their tennis serve.
If you watch slow motion tennis videos of Roger Federer or Peter Sampras, you will notice that both of these tennis legends use a platform stance. As a result, they have a great shoulder turn at the beginning of their motion which allows them to get into the perfect trophy position.
I consider that it is a lot harder to turn the shoulders when you use a pinpoint stance, because you will tend to face the net more. Thus, I would encourage you to try the platform stance.
There are still many pro, college, junior, and recreational players who made it work, which is fine. I just like to share the best tennis serve tips that I have discovered after studying the serve for more than three decades.
I have found that many players lose rhythm on their serve when they are in a pinpoint stance. They toss the ball, wait, and then move their back foot, which completely throws their rhythm off.
For instance, when the toss gets too high, your rhythm is off, and the ball drops too much. There are different players on the pro tour who actually toss the ball, wait before they move their foot, and still hit a great serve.
This simply shows that there are always exceptions to the rule. So, you have got to find out what works out best. Moreover, when players bring their back foot up, they face the net too much. Hence, they are not always sideways when making contact and unable to serve up to their full potential. Likewise, they lose disguise and struggle to hit a great topspin serve.
To fix this problem, I recommend moving your back foot up, you should still keep it behind the front foot. Therefore, you can still get a nice shoulder turn and disguise on your serve. To conclude, I want you to be aware of these secret tennis serve tips when using a pinpoint stance.
Remember getting your feet in the right position to have a great shoulder turn and develop proper rhythm. If you relate with any of the serve mistakes discussed, consider switching to a platform stance to make things easier.
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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