the most important concepts for any player to understand on the serve is that you need

to hit up and out. What does that mean? That means you need to imagine hitting up like

this rather than hitting down like this. Most players hit down on the ball because they

think the ball is up here, and they believe in order to get the ball into that little

box over there, they have to hit down. And of course that's why most players tend to

hit the serve into the net. The main reason why players do that is something that I've

talked to you about previously in a tip on the groundstrokes, that players look down

through the net at their target. So if I'm standing here and I look at the service box

that want to hit the ball into, I'm actually looking through the net and I'm looking down.

That does not correspond to the flight path that the serve and the ball should have.

So what can you do about this problem of hitting down on the serve too much and missing serves

into the net over and over? What I found to be most effective is to have a drill that

basically forces players to hit up and out. So what I would like you to do is to aim for

the middle of the back fence when you hit your serves. This drill is going to force

you to hit up and out. In the beginning, when you try this drill, most likely you're not

going to get close to the back fence. You might end up hitting towards the baseline

or even shorter than that. So you practice over and over until you start hitting the

middle of the back fence. Once you've hit a couple of serves there, then what I want

you to do is to work your way backwards. The next step is to aim for the baseline. So now

you hit a couple of serves towards the baseline. And once you've done that, you hit a couple

of serves towards the service box. And you can repeat this drill over and over. Now I'm

going to demonstrate this drill and I'm going to show you two serves that I hit towards

the back fence, two that I hit towards the baseline, and two that I hit into the service

box. Okay, going for the back fence, that was pretty good. I've obviously practiced

this drill before, so it doesn't take me that long. Going for the baseline, that was pretty

good as well. And the last two, going for the service box. Okay, that was in. And a

little bit long. Now most likely, once you get towards hitting into the service box,

you're going to miss a couple of serves long, and that's fine because we're really trying

to work on avoiding hitting into the net. Alright, so much for hitting up and out. Now

this is a concept that I believe you cannot work too much on. I really recommend that

you work on this on a regular basis over and over, hit some serves into the fence, hit

some serves towards the baseline, and then work your way backwards. I'm pretty sure you'll

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