Audrey is a 3.0 player from Colorado. She came to me with the hope that we’d taking her entire game to the next level. I chose to start with her serve — the one shot over which she (and every other player) has complete control.
Audrey had a good first serve. Her second, however, was noting but a dramatically slower version of her first. Or, to phrase it less politely, she barely had any second serve at all.
Audrey’s problem is a common one at the 3.0 and 3.5 levels: players choose to “play it safe” by tapping a soft, gentle serve to start the point and avoid double faulting. To do this they slow down their racquet speed. What they don’t realize is that swinging more slowly is always — and I mean, always — a recipe for disaster.
To teach Audrey to hit a true second serve, we worked through a series of progressions in which she learned how to swing in a direction different from the target. This kind of away-from-target swing creates huge amounts of spin. This spin achieves two goals simultaneously: it curves the ball up and over the net, and then brings it down into the court, making it safe and consistent.
The result is that players like Audrey no longer have to slow down and be careful on second serves. Instead, they can accelerate their racquets confidently while still making a high percentage of serves that are difficult for opponents to handle.
