jofo37 asked:
Some friends and I are playing tennis together pretty regularly, and they just got me into it. I just have a few questions. First of all, I am really bad at serving. What are some general tips on serving? And my one friend can hit the ball really fast off a serve, hitting it a certain way. How do I do that? Also, I look across other questions and I hear people mention the “sweet spot” in tennis. What does that mean? Also, any general advise would be good. And also, I am not playing competitively, just trying to have fun with friends and improve my skills.
Some friends and I are playing tennis together pretty regularly, and they just got me into it. I just have a few questions. First of all, I am really bad at serving. What are some general tips on serving? And my one friend can hit the ball really fast off a serve, hitting it a certain way. How do I do that? Also, I look across other questions and I hear people mention the “sweet spot” in tennis. What does that mean? Also, any general advise would be good. And also, I am not playing competitively, just trying to have fun with friends and improve my skills.
When you are serving you really should use a continental grip even if you are just starting out. A continental grip is the highly recommended grip for serving. It allows for better spin, kick , and power. To use a continental grip while you serve simpley just hold the butt end (bottom) of the grip on your racquet like you would a hammer. Try serving like this along with bending your knees and jumping forward. This grip will be hard to use at first and will fell weird but you should see improvement with your serve. Also you should perfect your ball toss so you can do it almost perfect every time. When you toss the ball to serve it should be high and in front of you when u strike it.
The “sweet spot” on a tennis racquet is basically just the center of the racquet. You should try and strike the ball every time in the sweet spot of the racquet so your not shanking alls all over the place. Some racquets have bigger sweet spots than others and this usually depends on the headsize of the racquet. Racquets with larger headsizes generally have bigger sweet spots. Also when you hit the ball with the center of the racquet or the sweetspot the shot should feel smooth and make a clean popping noise.
To start with, the sweet spot is the spot where the ball will bounce off the fastest with the least amount of vibration when hitting the ball. It is usually located near the center of the racquet.
For serving as a beginner the main thing to remember is to hit slightly under the ball. Most beginners I have taught will have the tendency to hit down on the ball which will almost always go into the net. You will want to make sure that you are using the proper continental grip and hitting the ball quite far above your head. This should give you a solid serve after a little bit of practice.
As far as general advice, if your opponent has harder shots than you and you dont have the capability to be hitting winners then just try and make them run around a lot. Just use common sense and if they are in the far left try hitting to the right and if they are at the net try lobbing it to the baseline.
Even if you dont end up winning the game, atleast your opponent should be exausted.
Hope this info helps!
Just an advice for serving, you have to use the continental grip. Your friend would probably hit a flat serve making it appear so fast for beginners, but for you I’ll suggest you practice putting a little bit of a top spin on the serve so that you’ll consistently get it in. Well at first, it may not seem as fast as your friend’s flat serve, but you know what it’s deadly once you eventually put power into it. Not to mention, it looks so good to see those brilliant kick serve. But it really takes a lot of time to master it.
Tennis is a hard game to really get good at, but once you have you have. As for serving, try to use basic technique at first. (throwing arm straight, come up with the ball, scratch your back, hit at highest point, snap your wrist) After you can get it in regularly, you can work on speed by gradually puting more and more effort into your swing. As for spin and what not, it is harder to just explain. You have to hit the ball a certain way with your racquet angled and the toss varies from each kind of spin serve. if you really want to learn that i would suggest taking some lessons. make sure they’re private, group ones arn’t good, especially for begginers.
to answer your 1st and second q’s you need to hold your racket in a continental grip hold you raquet so that the side of the racket(the stringbed) or the thick part of the grip is directly parralel to your knucklesbasicly your raquet need to be perfectly straight (you should hit your volleys like this as well), you also need to toss the ball slightly infront of you so that your weight can come down on the ball and you need to make sure you hit the ball at the peak of the toss (at its highest point) this will also help your serve be more powerful. you shoukld also hit the ball flat as in with basicly no spin or slice which will give you more power but you will have more of a chance to hit it out or at the net.
as for the sweetspot most people say it is the middle of the raquet but actually on most raquetsit is slightly above the middle and the size of the sweetspot will depend on the type of raquet you have
The sweet spot is the middle of your raquet, usually where the logo is. It hits off faster and speedier at that spot. For serving, use your continental grip and don’t forget to turn your body while serving. A good toss leads to a good serve. For 1st serve, the toss should be right in front of you. for 2nd serve, your toss should be slightly behind you. Move you raquet back slowly and hit the ball fast, aiming for the opposing box. hope that helps.