Tennis drills for the toss on the serve
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After writing my article on how to get a perfect toss for the serve, I got a lot of questions on how to make the toss more consistent. So I thought I would give you some tips on how you can get your toss for the serve more consistent.
To get a good serve, you need to have a good contact point. To get a good contact point, you need a consistent toss that lands in the same spot each and every time.
First of all, you need to hold the ball correctly. You should hold the ball with your fingertips, and not in the palm of your hand.
Secondly, you should lift your arm up instead of throwing the ball up. Start with your left arm at your left thigh and lift the arm up with a straight arm. You should release the ball at eye level, and make sure that the ball does not spin in the air. When you release the ball, make sure that you just open up your finger tips. Do not flip the ball upwards by bending your arm, or your wrist.
Tennis drills that you can practice on:
- When I was a kid, I used to place the tennis racket flat on the ground in front of me with the racket handle butt pointing against the front toe and the strings towards the net. Then I tossed the ball up, and I wanted the ball to land on my strings.
When I teach my students, I never use this drill because they will only practice on the toss and not on the contact point. The reason of this is that it is hard for the student to measure if the ball was tossed at the correct height.
What you can do instead is to stand sideways to a wall, or fence were you have put a mark as the correct height of the ball toss. Your racket should still lie on the ground in front of you. Now you will practice on a consistent ball toss were you having two reference points; the correct height and the correct spot. - Another great drill is to visualize a square above you were you want your toss to go through. Or, you can have someone to hold an empty ball can at the contact point, and you should try to toss the ball up into the ball can. This is my favorite drill to use if I see that the biomechanics of the toss looks good.
- One reason for an inconsistent service toss is the use of too much wrist action. By using your wrist, often causes the ball to be thrown backwards over your head.
To correct this you can practice the toss by making your fist as an ice cream cone. Place the ball on the top of the ice cream cone and lift the arm up, and the ball will leave your fist by itself. 
If you get too much spin on the ball and the ball has a tendency to float backwards, you are probably holding the tennis ball in your palm of your hand. A great tip on how to correct this problem is to hold two tennis balls in your hand because then you have to hold the front ball with your fingertips as seen on the picture. It is the front ball that you should toss upwards by opening up the 3 fingers that holds the ball.
If you have an inconsistent ball toss, try to figure out what the problem is and use one of the above drills to correct the dilemma. One of the best ways to see the problem is to video tape yourself playing.
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