Another great video, thanks. More exercises would be great. I'm a 4.0 player and my kick has a ton of spin but not enough speed. I'd also like to push it further into the court.
Nice idea to slightly adjust the grip! Will definitely try that next session. Could you show us a demo of you hitting kick serves to better see the full motion?
i ve a kick serve which has a nice height but its weak which i hate..what should ı do for making it faster...i cant give power to my kick serve thats my problem...
Toss above the head doesn't work, the 8-2 movement automatically becomes 6-12 (i.e. full upwards force on the ball) and the ball lands out. Toss it slightly forward and slightly left - as Meike Babel described it in a recent video, it should land on the left shoulder or in front of it if I rem right - and the ball gets BOTH forward and upward force as required.
at the high school level having a good kick serve feels like a cheat code, very rarely do i get my serve broken. Although I play 1A tennis which is schools with under 100 kids, so its not the toughest competition
Need to understand the exercise to allow the ball to accelerate on the kick serve after pitching on the opponents court, in short to get momentum to the kick serve and not just a loop. Looking forward to that.
the grip adjustment is new to me & will try that! Is there a sweet spot on the racquet acceleration? I feel if I drive it slower than usual, it creates more kick to it for some reason.
The faster your racket, the more spin you (can) generate. However, the more spin you generate, the slower the ball will travel. You may be feeling like you’re getting more kick with a slower swing, but it’s more likely that you’re not getting as much spin, so the ball is travelling quicker? Tough to know for definite without seeing!
I'd like to see examples of a 9 to 12 serve vs 8 to 2. My kick (I'm right-handed) kicks to a righty's forehand. When I focus on pronation, it kicks straight. I want to figure out how to kick it spinning to a righty's backhand. Thanks.
Thank you, great video! I would like to know how to add power to a kick-serve. I can add good spin to the ball and pass over the net easily, yet the service has little power. How can this be fixed?
Thanks very much for this, Ashley. I use the kick a lot, and it requires regular practice. No one else that I play with has it, so consequently my good ones usually come back quite weakly, if at all.
Great tips Ashley. I keep forgetting that subtle change of grip, which is why my kick serves lack bite! Against a strong player, a weak kick serve sits up and begs to be killed by an aggressive return.
Cool video but you missed one very important part with the toss, the straight up toss will allow you to create spin yes but you will loose all pace and any chance of kick, you still do need to throw the ball into the court at the 12 O clock position but you must lean forward on your front foot so that your head is still underneath the ball, this way when you push off your feet your kick serve will actually have pace and provide kick. The tip I give credit to Boris Becker who has his own channel that explains this.
Thanks CH, you’re right… once you’ve developed good mechanics on your kick serve, throwing the ball more in front of you can allow you to get more speed on the ball and in turn more kick. However, I find that to get the feel of topspin in the first place, bringing your ball toss further back can be much easier. If you go straight into learning a kick serve with a ball toss in front of you, players end up hitting more of a slice than kick. I don’t disagree with you 👍
@@TheTennisMentor The real key to a kick serve to remain sideways through contact. The way to toss the ball in front and remain sideways is to lean into the court with your hips and you see that with pros. If you teach tossing the ball further back, you can develop bad habits. Like your racket path is not correct and you thinly swing up on the back of the ball. When you get more advanced, you know this is wrong but hard to fix. The swing path toward the ball is more like a flat serve but the follow through is sideways. I don't really know what is the best way to teach this. My experience is that the Kicker is unlike anything you can imagine as a serve and so trying to make it easier in progressions wouldn't help me. I would be better off learning the advanced technique right off the bat. For others it maybe the right approach. However, I think, this is a serve that most amateurs would give up on.
A good intro, thanks. As you know, I'd like to consider myself an advanced player but who knows, haha. To Fed, everyone's a beginner. I would appreciate more advanced topics. One comment: I toss my first serve at 12 o'clock and this allows me to disguise my flat, slice and topspin serve (if I want). However on the second serve, there's really no need to disguise it. No one, not even pros, hits a flat serve on the second serve unless they are 7 foot tall (or Zverev). So typically I toss to 11:30 to kick it and if I want to fool my opponent sometimes, I will slice it with that toss too. As I said before, I wouldn't attempt a kick serve unless I had a consistent, reliable toss. The mechanics are too complicated and unnatural. If you can't place the toss exactly at 11:30 every time you will get frustrated and left with a bad taste in your mouth.
Thanks Wally Friend… do you have a specific topic you’d like me to cover? I personally throw the ball a little more left for my topspin serve, although my opponents can get a read on it, I know I can get it to their backhand so it doesn’t matter. I don’t tend to work on the kick with adult club players unless they request it… I find they can get a lot more out of developing a good slice serve. It’s more simple, doesn’t require as much physical work and moves more! If you can hit a flat serve and a good slice with variety, you’ll do ok! Thanks as always for your great comments!
@@TheTennisMentor Thanks for response. I'm trying to develop that angle passing shot. The one requires a buggy whip action. I can do it but not very consistently. Also, would like your thoughts on hitting a hard flat inside out forehand. I can't seem to really crush that ball like I want to. Always has some topspin. I think it has to do with how I'm striking the ball. It should have a more circular trajectory. Another topic is the running down the line forehand. I'd like more pace on this too. Maybe it's connected to the inside-out forehand problem I have. Also, the stretched volley has been problematic for me. Maybe you can help me on that. Yeah I totally agree with you on the slice serve. I think a lot of WTA players have problems with the kick serve and just slice the second serve. However, slicing to a righties backhand is not the strongest second serve cos it will spin toward the returner. But certainly better than a flat serve.
Superb explanation, i will try this today and see how it goes. I must say that tossing for a flat serve, sometimes makes me toss in front in a kick serve making the ball going to the net, it is so frustrating.
thank you very much for your lessons very understandable very professional a lot of logical stuff and a lot of examples and tips I will use it for my source and I'm sure it helped me a lot to improve my tennis thank you one more time for your beautiful and very hard job very usable job for us keep going when you give you watching video I share this video with my friends thanks again,,
