Why You Must Use The Slice Serve In The Deuce Court

Tennis Evolution

Show Notes

Hey, it’s Jeff Salzenstein, founder of Tennis Evolution, and former top 100 ATP pro, also USTA High Performance coach. And today, I’ve got a powerful tip that I want to share with you. We’re going to talk about the serve.

Now, what do you think is one of the most impactful serves that you can hit as a tennis player? Got any clues? Well, I really like the slice serve out wide in the deuce court if you’re a righty. So, here are some reasons why I like this serve.

Number one: you can start every game serving out wide and pulling your opponent off the court. So, you’re opening up the court, and then you can play that first ball to the open court. There’s nothing like being able to get your opponent off the court and to be able to run them on the next ball. So, you’re doing it on the first point of the game, you can do it at 30 all, and you can do it in a deuce, and it just opens up the court so that you can see the opening to hit to.

Now, there’s another benefit there. Again, assuming you’re playing a right-handed player when you play to the open court, you’re making your opponent hit a running backhand. And I don’t know about you, but most players do not like to hit backhands on the run, me included. So, you definitely want to practice the wide slice in the deuce court if you’re a righty, and of course, if you’re a lefty. you’ve got to own that wide slice in the ad court.

I’m a lefty. I loved hitting that can opener out wide in the ad court on big points, but those righties out there, you’ve got to practice the wide serve in the deuce court and own that serve. Practice it more than any other serve.

Roger Federer uses this serve unbelievably well, and he uses it often, even when his opponents know that the serve is going there, there’s still not much they can do about it, because if they don’t hit a clean winner, which is very difficult, they’re going to be on the run on the next shot. So, I definitely want you to practice that wide serve as much as possible.

Now, before we go today, I want to give you a couple little technical tips that can help you. First of all, when you’re on the deuce court serving, if you want to get more wide slice, there’s a couple of things that you can do.

First, as I said, you can stand out wider. So, in singles, you can stand out wider in between the singles sideline and the midline. You don’t have to stand close to the midline. So, you step out a foot or two to create more angle to hit that serve.

Another thing that you can do is you can actually point your feet a little bit more towards the net. Now, if you’re already pointed towards the net with this serve, okay, maybe you don’t want to point more, but many players are turned sideways during their motion.

So, for example, the front foot is parallel to the baseline, and that’s great if you want to hit awesome kick serves, but if you just point your front foot slightly, that will allow you to carve around the ball a little bit easier.

And finally, related to carving around the ball, there’s a lot of talk out there about pronation and focusing on pronation on all your serves. And you know what? Any type of serve that you hit: slice, topspin, or flat, you are going to pronate, but I really believe that you should feel like you’re carving around the outside of the ball, the side of the ball, even though you’re not actually doing that. When you hit a wide slice or a slice serve, you’re not doing that, like… you’re not really doing that. You want to focus on feeling that.

So, a lot of times, there’s a confusion between what we see and what we do, what we feel, as it relates to technique. So, we can explain that someone’s pronating, but I actually focus more on what you need to feel. So, you get to feel your hand or the racket carving around the outside of the ball.

So, hopefully, you enjoyed today’s podcast, and you got a lot of value out of the tips that I shared with you today. To review, make sure that you practice that wide slice if you’re a righty in the deuce court, so that early in games, and at 30-all in a deuce, you can hit that wide slice to open up the court and attack the backhand on the next shot, and make sure you use those little tips like pointing the feet, standing out a little bit wider, and carving around the outside of the ball, so that you can hit better wide slices.

Now, if you enjoyed this tip that I gave you today, go ahead and subscribe to our iTunes channel, and make sure you leave a review, because that really helps us to get the word out that gets more tennis players and coaches involved with our podcast. We’re really committed to helping players all over the world. So, thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you at the next podcast.