Serve Contact Point

Coaches, stop telling players to serve at “1 0’clock”. This is confusing and not accurate.

A very common tennis teaching comment is “Serve at 1 O’clock” when referencing the serve contact point. The concept is understandable and can be useful, however it is not completely accurate. A better comment would be to say is “contact is over your hitting side shoulder”. This accomplishes two things. It gets the north – south alignment correct and the east – west alignment correct. If the contact is over the shoulder, this prevents the contact being too far in front of the pivot point of the swing, which causes a downward hit and subsequent open racquet face correction. Both of which are improper techniques. While you can serve like this, you are very limited in being able to hit angles and spin.

Also, if you refer to a clock, it is better to assume the hand is the center of the clock and clearly, 1pm is not the time at contact. 10 or 11 is more appropriate for the serve. The right side of the clock is forehand contact points for right handed players.

Using the body as the clock center, you can also see this is not correct. 1pm is way too far to the right, regardless, the contact should be over the shoulder and not referenced by time on a clock face. When players think of 1 o’clock, they often use forehand grips and make contact on the right side of the handle which prevents the upward and outward motion of the serve.  Unfortunately, a lot of new players get in this position resulting from poor instruction. Breaking this habit can be difficult once muscle memory is established, making intervention more challenging. To correct this, we typically start with very basic motions that send the arm upward and outward and use progressions to get into the correct motions and contact point.

If you are not sure if you are in the correct position, send me a video of your serve and I’ll be happy to provide a one-time free analysis.

Coach Kyle