Start in the Trophy Pose, then Hit

The fifth step of the serve progressions is to hit the ball like we did in the previous step, except now you start with your hitting arm and tennis racket in the “L” position. If you remember from the serve fundamentals section of the website, the “L” position is the completion of your backswing. It puts your arm and the tennis racket in position to swing forward correctly later in the service motion.

At 30 seconds in the video I demonstrate the motion. From the “L” position, I drop the tennis racket onto my shoulder. Once I do this, I’m in the exact same body position we started from in the previous video. It’s worth noting that this transition is essentially how you transition to the racket drop during a “normal” serve. I’m not 100% in the racket drop when the racket is resting on my shoulder, but that’s fine. You DO NOT want to try to get to a full racket drop when you’re first learning the serve. It will only complicate things.

Once I’ve got the racket on my shoulder, I use the mechanics we previous discussed to get to my contact point. I swing up on edge and pronate to get the racket to contact. At the same time, I transfer my weight to my front foot and rotate my body toward the net.

When you’ve master shadowing the motion, then you can try and hit the ball starting in the “L” position. Just like in the previous videos, you should hit as soft as possible so you can really work the technique. I demonstrate this at about 1:45 into the video.