Having Problems with Your Serve? Check your ball toss

The ball toss in tennis is extremely underrated in my coaching opinion. Players come to me on tennis holidays desperate to improve their serves at the intermediate level or even higher. It’s always the ball toss I find is a big issue to consistency and accuracy problems with their serve. So often the toss isn’t even on their radar to look for and find fault. The serve is certainly the hardest shot in tennis and it all begins with a ball toss. So this should be your 1st of observation.

The serve in tennis starts with the ball toss. Without the ability to place your ball toss every time in the best contact position your serve will suffer. The ball toss needs to be practiced like a tennis stroke. The rule is you can take as many try’s as you need for your toss. But less is more.

Pro tip:💡

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The Mindset Behind Your Ball Toss

There’s a mindset behind the ball toss.

Yep, prepare yourself to practice something you likely take for granted. You´ll think it doesn't deserve your attention but it does.

It's the first step to the success of your serve. If you´re putting up a ball toss that’s moving all over the place, you're ripe to hit any old toss you throw up. You´re going to have a problem. You’ll try to blame it on the mechanics of the serve when it’s really the mechanics of your toss.

When adult players visit me in Mallorca for a training camp we serve everyday. Practicing your serve is huge! And 8 times out of 10 I need to correct the ball toss.

When I explain that the toss is the problem players get on board quickly. They entertain me for a moment. They throw up a couple tosses based on a tennis tip & quickly revert to serving a ball - hitting the EXACT same WRONG toss.

My point?

When something needs adjusting in tennis you have to open your mind up and work through it. Until it becomes a new habit. It doesn’t need to take a lot of time. But it does require your focused practice on hitting a workable toss. Your tennis serve is really important. So is your toss.

The toss WILL frustrate the hell out of you, but once you know which one works (height, contact point and placement) you’ll easily develop a reliable serve.

The Ball Toss: How many chances do you get?

The ball toss is a delicate toss of the ball above your head to position your racket face in alignment with the ball toss. The perfect toss on your serve is positioned at 1:00 on a clock. The ball sits up in the perfect position to catch the racket strings.

You get 2 serves entering a new tennis point. A first serve and a 2nd serve. You can toss as many times as you need-legally.

You´ll want the height to be controllable. Not too high for the wind to grab it. But high enough for a full body extension upwards to contact the ball and clear the net. If you let the toss drop too low you will likely miss the contact point and swing into the net.

Most players won’t do that - try again. They succumb to the peer pressure after about 2-3 ball toss attempts.

Your opponent may appear annoyed but it’s legal to try as many times as you need.

If you start walking to catch up with a ball you’ve tossed in the air - that’s not a good sign. You don’t want to chase your ball toss.

I talk about this a lot in my online beginner tennis course How to play tennis for beginners.

Welcome to your first real mental challenge in tennis - your ball toss. Players don’t like to look out of control with the toss. So they swing.

They’ll swing at a ball going to the side of their body. Behind the body. Inside the court... literally walking around to catch up with a crazy toss.

This causes more anxiety which exacerbates your toss and causes you to lose total confidence in your serve. When you hate walking up to that line to serve. Your serve has mentally dominated you. I’ve gone through it personally in my junior days. I’ve watched players leave the sport based on their serve.

But really, it takes a little visualization and deep breaths to calm your muscles, shoulder, arm and wrist.

Why Your Serving Ball Toss so Important

The ball toss sets up a successful serve. You probably already know the serve is known as the toughest stroke in tennis to learn. A lot of coordination and timing have to happen consistently to make a good serve.

And the serve makes players really nervous because it’s not easy to get that ball over the net and inside a service box. It can make you feel horrible to double fault over & over again in front of people.

Elena Dementieva, Maria Sharapova and Ana Ivanovic all suffered for a time professionally with an erratic ball toss! I remember suffering for them watching on TV.

Everyone goes through it at some point. The important thing is how to find your way out. When the ball toss gets inside your head it can cause a lot of damage to your psyche & affect the mechanics of your serve for awhile.

You don’t need a tennis court. You can fix it outside in your driveway or inside your house with high ceilings.

Fix Your Toss at Home

tennis serve stance — Look at that perfectly locked elbow!

You know the serve stance... right? Sideways to the net. Feet positioned at a 45 degree angle. Check!

Make sure your feet are in place ... because we don’t want to develop a foot fault problem.

Loosen your tossing arm, shoulder, wrist and hand. Especially the fingers. If you´re tight or nervous for any reason your toss will show it.

Breath, relax and let´s find your happy ball toss place.

Old school still works. Plot out your 1:00 position that’d you see on a giant clock like the image below. That 1:00 position you look down and see is directly off of your front left toe (for right handed players) .

Put down your racket on the ground. Position the racket handle exactly lined up with your left toe. The foot at the 45 degree angle. The center of that racket face is where we want to toss and let the ball land.

Lock your tossing arm - elbow. Just like Serena here. And relax the wrist and fingers.

As the ball goes up, so does your head and eyes in order to track that ball toss. Your eyes & head will remain up on the ball until you’ve made contact with the ball.

If you have thrown up a workable toss. Let’s take a look at the video below.

How to Toss the Ball for Consistency

Are you relaxed?

Now rest your tossing hand with the ball loosely on your left thigh (for right handed players).

Make sure to keep your hitting hand loose as well. On the serve we hold the racket looser than other strokes to accommodate the wrist snap. More on that later.

Remember! Lock that elbow. That’s right, straight arm it - gently.

Now take great care to keep the wrist straight as that arm fully extends up gently & the ball just rolls off and gingerly off out of the finger tips.

If you´re nervous or tight it will affect the body and the ball. And create jagged movements when you need fluid movement here.

indie tenis how to play tennis ball toss position — 1:00 on a clock is the location to place your tennis ball toss

The elbow can pull the ball backwards. You don’t want that. That wouldn’t be out in front of you at 1:00. That would be a ball that lands behind you.

The wrist can also twitch backwards. And again, so will the ball toss, land behind you.

The fingers can also flick the ball backwards if you’re not thinking about it.

As your locked tossing arm goes up straight from your left thigh it should be perfectly in line with your left toe. In that position at 1:00 is where you raise the racket from the back to hit the ball. That 1:00 position is where the racket strings are positioned in a perfect pathway to hit the ball toss. It’s also in line with the box you’re aiming for.

Is it easy? Not at 1st. It’s why we dedicate daily practice the serve every adult coaching holiday. Every private lesson. And ideally every time you head out on court.

This drill you see me & Fabrizio working on is a drill - still so popular that’s been around since we were kids and it’s still the best way to develop the ball toss. And using the racket face as your target is easy to gauge how close or far off you are. How many times out of 50 can you hit it? That’s another good gauge. Start with 10 time - how many times could you hit it?

Then beef that number up to 25 … how many times out of 25 can you hit the center? Increase it from there. Make your ball toss bullet proof. So that nothing can mentally rattle your mind around the toss because you’ve developed it with consistency in mind.

And of course location. If your toss doesn’t sit out at 1:00 on a clock in front of you, you’ll be able to see just how wild it is.

Drop the racket down off that left toe on the diagonal. You’re lining the racket strings up exactly where you need to connect with the ball.

Toss the ball up. Head and eyes up. Let the ball drop without touching it or stopping it.

Did it hit the center of the strings? No? Do it again.

Did it hit the racket frame? Yes? That’s not what you want. You want the strings. Try it again.

But this is fun and let’s you know how far you’re off with placing the ball toss where it needs to be for a successful serve. Most importantly it works.

Wish I knew who to give credit to for that ball toss drill because it’s a dinosaur that has stood the test of time.

How High Should Your Ball Toss Be?

Great question. Not too high. It’s not necessary.

It’s too easy to lose control of the ball in the air. If mother nature is on court that day the wind can wreck havoc on your toss - serve. The ball will be all over the place. And you´ll have very little consistency.

The idea is to take your hitting arm up fully extended including a decent reach upwards towards the point of contact. When you make contact with a ball that you’ve reached up for your serve will clear the net. That shoulder extension is a pretty big deal. For the sake of getting the ball over the net. So you want the ball as high as your racket extension. Take a look where the sweet spot is when your racket is extended.

You´ll need it as high as that and not higher.

Remember! You’re looking to control your toss! You´re standing 39 ft. back from the net, behind the baseline.

Ladies, I see a common thing you girls do. You put a high toss up only to let it drop down too low. There is NO need to put up an exaggerated toss height only to hit it down at the level of your head. You girls really need to stretch and extend upwards to clear the net!

Gentlemen, forget power & kick serves until you can consistently get your serve in. There’s ZERO power for the ball toss. It’s height and placement. And since everyone stands at different heights, it’s going to be based on your body & extended reach height. If your ball toss drops too low, you´ll hit it in the net. That’s not good. You’d rather hit it long. But never in the net.

I want to impress on you that tennis players aren't judged by if they play singles or doubles. Private club or public courts. Hard hitters or big topspin forehands.

You’re tennis level is judged … on your serve. Your UTR rating is different.

For a look at how to serve in tennis for beginners click here.

And for your other most important tennis stroke, the perfect forehand, click here.

You could have the coolest topspin forehand or prettiest 1-handed backhand but if you can´t get a reliable serve in the box. It’s going to be tough to advance.

Aim for a ball toss that’s calm and efficient. It won’t always be totally perfect player! But over time you’ll figure out a margin of error for you to be comfortable hitting your ball toss when it veers off to the side at 1:30 or 12:30 and say to yourself... “I can pull this toss off pretty well. Or... “Oh no. This toss is in back of me”. And decline from taking a swing at it.

Remember! You can take as many tosses as you need, legally!

Stop chasing your tosses.

With love from Mallorca~

Beginner Tennis: Stop Chasing Your Ball Toss!