What is a Racquet Lag on the Tennis Serve? 

Why the tennis serve is so difficult & how it can be simplified 👉 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q79I1rP0VpE.htmlsi=88HnmgE45iICbNxp

After watching this video I finally realized the concept of the “loop” in the service motion. The right to left concept after the trophy position was difficult for me to understand. The bending of the elbow after the trophy position was another tip that confused me even more. My serve became sort of mechanical because on every ball toss I would be thinking of bending the elbow and then trying to get the racquet to move left to right. I watched other videos and heard the concepts of lassos and whips; but , after watching you demonstrate the loop I realized that’s what the bending of the elbow and the left to right action does. I now think only about looping the racquet after it reaches the trophy position and everything else falls into place naturally. I fall into the category of someone who’s been serving wrong for so long that it’s going to be difficult for me to get the racquet to swing out and come up on edge before I make contact; however, I have made progress and I’m definitely getting more “pop” on my flat and slice serves.

This is the most important part of the serve. It should happen naturally and intuitively, but player still must be aware of it. Without this racket whip lag true serve does not exist. Great video, Nikola!

Excellent point. The truth is many other players, particularly at the recreational level, are experiencing the same thing. It's normal. There are multiple and challenging components to a good and biomechanically correct service motion. To resolve this, I would recommend that you take some lessons with Nick or someone as skilled, so that he or she can assess your service motion and help you understand what's going on and provide a strategy for improvement. This can be accomplished with a combination of skilled observation and video analysis. But this is only for the player who's serious about improvement. The alternative is to potentially continue the development of bad habits which will become extraordinarily difficult to overcome. Nick explained this well in the video. There's also a potential injury component of repetitive bad motion over time. Unfortunately, you can't just watch a video of Federer and then go out and expect to serve like him. However, there are many who believe otherwise. Take the lesson and do the practice routine, though likely for many hours. The end result will be game changer - at any age! Best of luck.

Very thanks Nik! How wonderfully you teach for understanding serv. I will definitely share it with my friends. I can imagine how happy everyone will be! Sincerely!

Dear Mr. Nikola Aracic, I am a fan from China and an amateur tennis enthusiast. I frequently watch your videos to improve my tennis skills. Your content is truly exceptional and has been immensely helpful in my tennis journey. As your videos are not available in Chinese, I would like to request your permission to translate them and share them on my Bilibili and Xiaohongshu accounts. I would, of course, clearly credit you as the original creator and provide links to your original videos, encouraging those interested to follow your channel directly. Your consideration of this request would be greatly appreciated.

It seems from my experience that good racket drop depth is to a significant extent linked to both relaxation and a steep cartwheel angle where the toss arm remains high until the serve swing is initiated. I could be wrong though, but if not: I think that's more useful to keep in mind than exactly how the racket moves as that happens way to fast to consciously focus on.

Great video Nick❤ Sometimes it just takes the belief that your fundanentals will help you amp up your serve delivery. My biggest concern right now is the ball toss placement.

Thanks for the video Nick. I'm definitely in the re-calibration group - I've been playing for a long time, but even though I know how I should be swinging on the serve, I feel like I have many years of incorrect muscle memory that messes me up when I do my full service motion. Hopefully your tip at the end can give me something to work on to recalibrate my swing.

Great lesson. 🎾 I think if you, for a brief instant, visualize striking the ball with the "wrong" side of the racquet, it helps to achieve the lag. So not entirely intuitive. It can be drilled with this cue. 🤔

Hi Nick! When you break the serve into several parts in which there should be control over racquet positioning, then this is one thing, but when I start to serve, the movements turn out to be a little chaotic and it is very difficult to track where and at what point I am and how far the racquet handle goes, etc. The more relaxed you make the serve, the faster the racquet flies (the so-called whip effect) and at the same time it is harder to understand in what phase and how the racquet should behave.. it's really complicated for me ATM.

Great one. Though I always have a hard time gauging how much rotated are you at contact. Could you please make a video about that?

for several month I studied many tutorial videos on service pronation, none has focused on the lateral shift of the racket, right past the elbow position, I know I did it sometimes, specially when I served in a very relaxed almost careless way, I hope this will at last help me to gain some more speed on my serve, Scientifically, following Newtons law, I still struggle to understand the advantage. I guess the speed must be at its highest value of acceleration when the racquet opens its face to the ball. The rest of the movement after hitting the ball does not seem to have a physical effect, except to continue the opening of the racket. If I open the racket too soon, I guess I am losing valuable speed because of air resistance ?

I think the less pronunciated lag with the baby racket has more to do with the length than with the weight (although probably both factors affect it). In the padel smash I barely see a lag, and the racket is heavier than the tennis ones (around 370g)

Wow this is one of the problems with my serve. I have been doing eastern forehand grip for a while, now transitioning to continental grip, but im hitting it on an angle and always getting slice.

Lovely Pickleball lines😂

My biggest impediment with a decent serve is the toss. I have to mentally force myself to toss the ball higher so I have time to perform a proper service motion. The greatest frustration is when you do everything right, you go "oh yeah" on contact, and the ball hits the net. It feels so good but you did something so wrong. 😢😢😢😢