maybe you find yourself having a pretty good first serve,

usually flat like this and then on the second serve basically you do a slower

version of this serve and just gently tap the ball into the box. Or maybe you

do a little better than the tap in and you have a slice serve as your second

serve and it's something like this. The tap in second serve will work to some

degree. At the lower recreational levels returners will actually get confused by

the slow pace of the ball and they might give you some return mistakes but as you

reach the higher recreational levels the 4.0 the 4.5 these type of serves

tend to be hit very aggressively by the returner. The problem with having a slice

serve as a second serve is that the ball will have a lower trajectory. So even on

a slice serve you will not be able to hit the ball with full speed and you

will have to be careful as you execute the second serve as a slice. So this is

not a good option for the higher recreational level. You might be able to

get away with a slice serve as a second serve up to the 4.5 level.

But a lot of the 5.0 players will be able to hit slice second serves very

aggressively and put you on a lot of pressure because you will not be able to

serve with a lot of speed. So the solution for you to play a high level

recreational tennis is to learn a kick serve and basically your kick serve has

many advantages over the tap and over the slice as a second serve. And if we

look at the biomechanics of the kick serve we are going to be positioned

sideways with our torso when we make contact and the toss is usually going to

be either a 12 o'clock or slightly over towards 11 o'clock for right-handed

players. As a result of that and when we make contact the racket will be

positioned slightly pointing towards the left and now as we hit down the racket

will go up over the ball this way. Because we're going to be positioned

sideways at contact and have our tip of the racket pointing towards the left. Now

as our hand goes down the tip of the racket will go up over the ball and

making the ball spin this way. Now this obviously is gonna

be great when the ball finally lands on the other side of the court. The

ball will be more lively and have more action, but there's another reason why a.

kick serve executed in this fashion is a big advantage as a second serve.

A flat serve and a slice serve will have the tip of the racket just slightly pointing

towards the side when the racket makes contact and what that means is as the

player is finishing there will be more of a downward trajectory on these two

types of serves and the ball will usually clear the net and about this

level. And what that means is, it is not such a good thing as a second serve

because we are going to make more mistakes if we hit the ball with a lower

trajectory. And if you don't possess a kick serve and are using the flat or

the slice serve as your second serve you know the fact that the ball is clearing

the net lower to be true and maybe this is even happening at a subconscious

level. You know that if you hit the ball too hard as your second serve there's a

big chance of double faulting and exactly that is the reason why you are

slowing down your slice and your flat serve if it's used as a second serve.

Now on the kick because we have the racket positioned further towards the side,

now we're not going to immediately go down on the ball this way the racket

will travel up across the ball this way and that will keep the ball higher. It

will not be as low of a trajectory and therefore once the ball crosses the net

it's gonna clear the net a lot higher than any other serve. And this is

fantastic when it comes to second serves because now not only do we have net

clearance and are safe from missing Internet but also the ball will have a

tendency to go shorter into the box and we're also safe from missing long.

What about massive kick? Is it something that you should learn? Well

absolutely not because there's no such thing as massive kick at the

recreational level. Yes there are some professional players such as Dominick

Thiem and John Isner who can make the ball bounce extremely high but this is

something that's very rare even at the professional level. And most of the time

what you're seeing at the high level is trajectory and not kick. So basically if

I'm standing on the left and I'm serving to the ad side I'm gonna have a

rightward trajectory regardless of what kind of serve I choose. So now if I

choose to hit a kick serve even at a slower pace you can see that my ball is

going to kick way to the right after it bounces and this is regardless of how

much kick I put on the ball. Now if I do this in conjunction with kick obviously

the ball it's gonna shoot off way to the right. The true test in finding out how

much kick you have on your serve is trying to execute a kick serve from the

deuce side and having the ball a curve to the right if you're right-handed.

And this is not something you should ever concern yourself with because the

primary objective of a second serve that's struck with kick is control and not

power. Yes the big advantage of having a kick in addition to having a higher

trajectory and the ball landing in a safer spot is that you can hit the ball

with more racket head speed but this doesn't mean that the serve is

necessarily going to have more power. Anytime we're putting a spin on the ball

we're in fact slowing the ball down and exactly for that reason because we are

slowing the ball down by putting spin on it we are then able to hit this second

serve with a lot more racket speed as opposed to a for example a tap flat

second serve that we have to hit very gently in order not to over hit it.

And a well struck kick serve doesn't even have to be that fast 60 miles an hour is

sufficient for the recreational level and you even see some professional

players especially on the WTA Tour that serve between 60-70 miles an hour and

even the men will sometimes only serve between 70 and 90 miles an hour and the

speed is sufficient for you to have a good second serve. If I hit a flat or a

slice serve with that slow 60 mile an hour speed then this speed would

probably not be sufficient but since I'm hitting the ball with spin even though

the ball is moving slowly it is rotating enough and making a lively bounce that

the returner will most likely not go for the winner return and if they do they're

gonna make a lot of mistakes. So serve like this a medium-paced second

serve struck at probably somewhere between 60

to 80 miles an hour is a serve fast enough even at the professional level of

the game.

So in order for you to have a better second serve you must learn the kick and

there's no quick fix when it comes to learning the kick serve you must treat

this as a long-term plan and do not have short term goals because this will

only lead to frustration. Give yourself six months to a year to properly learn

the kick serve because then once you have this serve automated and you do have

the muscle memory you will eventually be able to use it in a match. And the only

way you're going to improve your kick serve and have it match ready is by

repetition and without this repetition your kick serve will not be an automatic

shot and you will not have the courage to use it in a match and now you're

going to be stuck in this cycle where you're not practicing the kick serve

enough and then having to always go back to your slice and your tap on the second

serve. So the only way for you to have a consistent kick serve that you are using

in matches is by repetition. Grab a basket of balls two to three times a

week and maybe you can get up to hitting 2,000 serves a month but if you multiply

that over course of a year these are a lot of serves and this is how you build

muscle memory. If you're interested in learning all the fundamentals to the

kick serve I have another video that's more detailed and step-by-step titled

how to hit a kick serve I'm gonna put a link in the description below. If you

have any questions about this video feel free to comment and don't forget to hit

that like button and subscribe if you haven't already. I'll see you next time.