What To Learn First Flat, Kick, or Slice? | Tennis Serve Tutorial for Beginners & Intermediates

Great video!

As much as I want a roddick like first serve, I just can't for the life of me figure out the pronation of the wrist. After practicing for a few weeks, I find the kick serve to be the easiest as well as most consistent.

Very enlightening video sir thank you very much . However i am not sure why i am still struggling with my forehand. earlier i used to rotate my wrist. Now i stopped using my wrist as i saw one of your video. Iplay my forehand correctly when i am practicing alone by dropping the ball . But when i practise with someone my forehand let me down :D

48M. I'm serious about getting better at tennis. Should I move to Florida to train. If so, where in Florida?

thanks for the help

Love it!

Very helpful. Thank you. Dave from St. Louis

best tennis channel around 💯

Nick - do you have a video where you speak to the mechanics of the loop portion of the serve (when learning this)? I ask, as it might be helpful to discuss how the shoulder leads the loop as the racket drops. One of the mistakes I made was leading the loop with the elbow which resulted in incorrect form into the ball which took me some time to figure out. Do you go over the specific mechanics of the loop somewhere?

Instead of tossing and then start the backswing, start the backswing and then once in the trophy position toss the ball up, kind of like Boris Becker

Hello Nikola, is it best to keep the speed of your serve the same, whether it's your first or second serve and the type of serve?

thank you very much for lesson it was very understandable very professional and I will do this Lord is mighty sore and thank you very much again for your big big job I know you work a lot of year to have this information for us and one more time a lot of thank you for that

Great video Nick, i am still learning a flat serve!

Great video Nik I've been studying this (and a few of your other service ones) intently the past 6 weeks and have developed a fairly good motion (if I do say so myself :)). One question: it looks like the back should be kept fairly straight and not arched, correct? Bend from the knees with the back relatively straight and push the hips towards the court appears to be the correct motion. I ask as I was developing some lower back pain and then noticed, from video'ing myself, that I have been arching my back. Thanks!

You have a great range of serve videos available, some with more mechanical detail than this one. I appreciate your various teaching lessons. I think here the really touch part for me is the acceleration forcing the racket outward to leave the tip facing the French before the true upward element. I'll keep working. Thanks.

Hi. I find these videos really helpful for beginners. I had a question about the Serve. What is the ‘acceptable length’ in terms of metres for a serve. I.e. does it have to get very close to the line every time to be considered a ‘good’ serve? Thanks.

are those pickle ball lines on your court?

Very informative and helpful video Nikola! Thank you

Someone ruined that awesome tennis court with pickleball lines

Good lord, that bit about learning the kick serve too early felt like it was directed specifically at me.

It's so hard to try to flatten out and speed up your first serve if you've already spent a ton of time on the kick serve. It feels very weird to hit a flat serve for a long time. 😵‍💫

Hi Nikola. There's a YT video called 'why the serve is so difficult' by feel instruction. There he explains that you don't swing towards the serve box. Could you explain how this works. Pronation with swinging towards the box seems more like a rotation around the long axis. His pronation is more perpendicular to this. Thx

I am 6 month Tennis beginner aged 40. Recently switched from Wilson encode(285gm) to Ezone 98 (305gm) Unstrung. I started feeling strong pain in my right shoulder especially after doing 10 to 15 serves during my game. Is it due to the weight of the new racquet ? Once the pain starts I can barely hold the racquet. After 6 to 8 hrs of rest again my should becomes normal.
Hope you can give some advice to me.
I like your videos. Thank you in advance

You forgot about underhand serve...

The lag....single most impactful serve tip ever for me. In a week the results for me have been remarkable. Thank you!!

at what point do you transition to slice and to then to kick? once you’re making 19/20 balls in the court during practice serving?

Hi Nick, do you have a video on how to develop the biomechanics for moving from racquet drop to getting the racquet to power loop to the right side of the body/lead from the edge into contact?

i played my today and i watched your forehand and backhand videos. it really helped me to get my loop in the forehand. thank you so much! my coach said he saw alot of improvement in my forehand and backhand . still my serve is not good, the toss is wayyy off. if you would like do a video of the grip in all of the shots. i cant figure out what my serve grip is. thank you for these videos!

Thank you

Although you recommend learning the flat serve first, I find learning the top spin serve helps me remember to swing the racquet in an upward motion. If I just hit flat serves, I might fall into the habit of treating the serve like an overhead (from the baseline).

GOod tennis!

Hi, recreational player here 🖐
So, I dislocated my shoulder 2 times in the span of 10 years, both times in the serve. The second time, I went to a specialist (doctor) who recommended to use a more 'pusher' aproach on the serve, instead of the classic 'raquet drop/pronation'.
Anyway, because of this, I am careful in my second serve, tossing the ball at 1 (not at 11) and cutting it up when it starts to drop. Not the 2nd greatest serve 😅
But my serve improved a lot thanks to your videos. Thank you!
Regards from Argentina.

I want to start with the underarm service

Hlo again coach Nick... I love the way you teach me(us viewers) on how to make our serve and be the best with it...im still playing competition in our place (recreational) and l seldom use flat serve because im not confident with it...tnx for the technique and me and my son really appreciate what lesson we learn from you...Hope you could share(give)your old rackets to me Coach Nick since our rackets here in the Philippines is soo expensive....Thanks a lot and continue making video

Thanks coach, Kick serve is probably the most difficult technique to learn in tennis

Nikola, just wanted to say this video has really helped me with my serve so thanks a million. I’m sort of in between the beginner and intermediate stage but felt I had to go back to the fundamentals on the serve as if I were a beginner. I didn’t realise something as simple as starting at the service line and gradually moving back (this is my own drill atm) could have such a profound effect on my ability to serve consistently.

May I don't understand about serves,but this is the only video which I found very ordinary from you sir...need much more comprehensive video...

How many reps would you say you need for the various progressions? How consistent should you be with one progression before moving on to the next one?

Thank you so much for your videos! Especially the serving series with Anna. I have watched so many videos and they don't break it down to beginner, intermediate, and full-fletched like you do. It really helps to work on bite-size mechanics at a time. I went from double fault to at least minimal to no double fault right now. Where are you based?

Why does it take so long for a person to develop a kick serve when they already have a solid first serve? As Nikola said there are only two things different. A toss and a lot less rotation. Not sure how this could take a year to develop unless the player does not understand that there are just two differences. If you are a junior, get a ball bucket and go out and practice. Place something that you can easily see maybe 20 degrees to your right and then only turn that much. But experiment. The more you turn the more power but less top. So experiment and practice. I have a pinched nerve that gives my right shoulder a ton of pain and not recovering anytime soon. So I am working on being lefty. My lefty forehand is fine since I have a two hander normally but I am trying to do the ATP forehand with it. Not terrible. The one hand backhand, a lot of good shots and a few in the net and a few into or over the back fence but I see progress. The serve, no racquet speed whatsoever. But I am working on a specific supination / pronation exercise. Right handed I can hit the ball from the start of 4 courts to the 4th court. With the left hand 20 feet. But I work on it daily and yesterday to the end of the second court. I think a lot of coaches leave out how important pronation is on all serves, and that you have to build up the pronation movement.

hi the grip for the serve u should call it the chopper grip and its like ur gonna chop someone that how ive always learnt the grip for serve and slide from my coach and now I have played in the LYG and national tourneys

I would have thought that it's not necessarily that learning the kick serve first is the issue, but rather learning fundamentally incorrect swing (ie. waiter's tray serve) is the problem. A lot of players would go towards waiter's tray serve at first even with the continental grip. This is OK as long as one progresses past that eventually (eg. first work on the toss and timing, etc). I agree that thinking about the various complex elements of the kick serve, such as bending various body parts and changing toss isn't good at the beginning at all. But there may be cases where trying to learn just the basic principle of the kick serve (ie. a bit of topspin on the ball) from the start could actually help to avoid staying the waiter's tray swing for too long.

Love the instructions, thanks coach!

Nikola, first thank you for the video. Question. When I serve fast; that is, trying to hit hard, I find that at the end of the serve my hand moves from the continental grip slightly towards the eastern grip (half a bevel of the handle). I know it is hard for you to know/see what one does wrong. But, if you were to guess, what causes this? And what should I do to stay with continental grip from the beginning to the end?
TIA.