The Serve
		I think that tennis is a very individual sport, in the sense that what works for one player won't necessarily work for another player.  Coaches and fellow players don't hesitate to critique the shots of their pupils, friends or opponents, but in reality I don't think there are many hard and fast rules that apply to everyone.
		One basic piece of advice on the serve is to not snap your head down too soon.  Look at photos of the pros serving, and you'll see that, right after they've struck the ball, they're still looking up at the spot where their racquet met the ball.  If you pull your head down too soon, you're likely to pull your serve down into the net.
		You can't hit down on the serve unless you're about 7 feet tall.  When you serve, visualize yourself hitting up at the ball and out towards your target.  While your racquet face is moving upwards, brush the back of the ball to give your serve topspin; the spin will help pull the ball down into the service box, meaning that you can clear the net by a safe margin and still get your serve in.  If you strike the ball with the racquet face moving straight forward (a "flat" serve with little or no spin), you're relying on gravity to bring the ball down into the service box; you can put a lot of pace on the ball that way, but you have to clear the net by a smaller margin or else the serve will go long.  Brushing the racquet face sideways across the back of the ball can impart sidespin, or "slice", which experienced players often use to pull the ball away from the receiver.  I recommend the topspin serve, the one with the highest margin of error, as your bread-and-butter serve.
		The racquet head should come down and across your body on the follow-through.  To me, that's the natural direction for it to go.  But I remember how Boris Becker's racquet would end up pointing straight down on his right-hand side after the serve, before he brought the racquet across his body.  I don't know how he was able to hit that serve for so many years.  I tried hitting a bunch of serves that way, and my arm hurt for days.
		I remember, when I was learning to play, reading Vic Braden state that the ball and the racquet should come up together at the beginning of the service motion.  He said that as the tossing arm rises, the serving arm should rise as well.  The elbows of both arms should rise in unison, and once the elbow of the serving arm has gone up, it shouldn't drop again until the follow-through, after the ball's been struck.  Once the elbow of the serving arm was raised, you should drop the racquet into the back-scratch position, then swing up at the ball.  Braden said that you should never look like the guy on a tennis trophy.  The guy on the trophy has his tossing arm extended upwards while the elbow of his serving arm is pointing towards the ground.  Braden said that the best servers didn't actually serve that way.
		There's nothing wrong with the type of serve recommended by Braden; in fact, the serve he described was much like Jimmy Connors' serve, a serve I would recommend that beginners imitate.  But the fact is, most of the best servers don't serve this way.  Look at Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras, and John McEnroe.  All these players have (or had, if they've retired) fearsome serves.  All of them, at one point in their service motion, have their tossing arm extended upwards, while the elbow of their serving arm is pointing down at the ground.  For that matter, look at the little dude in the "ATP Tour" logo.  You can see him at www.atptour.com, the official web site of the men's pro tour.  See how his tossing arm is pointing up, his serving elbow is pointing down, and the racquet is pointing up?  If it looks like a familiar pose, that's because you've seen it on so many tennis trophies.  (In fairness to Vic, he wrote that advice before the advent of modern graphite racquets.  Still, it's a good example of how changing technology has made some of the old tennis truisms obsolete.)
		Braden also had another piece of advice which has become much more widely accepted.  He said that you should only toss the ball to the point where you're going to hit it.  That way, the ball pauses for an instant before starting back down, which makes it easier to time your swing.  He said that if you toss the ball higher than that, it forces you to put a hitch in your serving motion while you wait for the ball to come back down.  Furthermore, a high toss is a nightmare on windy days.
		On the whole, I think the best toss is the one he described, where you try to toss the ball to precisely the point where your racquet makes contact with it.  But I've heard commentators say that there's absolutely no reason to toss the ball any higher than that, and I'm not sure that's true.  I once read a coach who said that it's better to toss the ball high, because it's easier to put topspin on the serve when you hit the ball on its way back down.  To me, that makes sense, that by striking a descending ball with an ascending racquet, you could impart more topspin.    I do know that three players - Ivan Lendl, Stefan Edberg, and Steffi Graf - who had high tosses also had excellent kick on their second serves.  Edberg had the highest toss of all, and the highest kick on his serve; he could kick the ball so high that the returner would strike it at shoulder level or even higher, which made it very difficult for them to generate much power on their returns.  Yes, Edberg's high toss made it difficult for him on windy days, and yes, there was a pause in his service motion -- in fact, right after he tossed the ball up, his hand holding the racquet was still down by his right knee.  But I don't think that these three players, who combined spent about fifteen years at number one in the rankings, went with a high toss just because they didn't know any better.  They practiced enough (and had enough talent) to be able to time the high toss, and it gave their serves something that they wanted.
		In my opinion, Jimmy Connors' serve is a good one for a casual player to imitate.  Connors can still be seen playing Champions Tour events, or you can catch an old match on the classic sports channel.  He also put out a very good instructional book in the late '80's.  Connors' serve isn't very flashy, but it's fundamentally sound and it makes it easy to put spin on the ball.  Also, you're not likely to injure yourself copying his serve; it puts fewer demands on the body than other serves, which means fewer adjustments as you get older.  My only reservation about Connors' serve is the odd angle of his wrist when he first brings the racquet up, before dropping it into the "back-scratching" position; if it works for you, great, but I didn't find it comfortable or natural.  My advice is to use a Continental grip and keep the wrist relaxed; you want the wrist to snap into the serve, and a tense grip on the racquet will prevent a fluid serving motion.  Pete Sampras has a model serve for someone who's a little more ambitious, but it might be too physically demanding if your stomach and back aren't ready for it.  Let me make the obvious disclaimer here that all my instructional advice is what works for me; you attempt it at your own risk.  I don't think enough people will read my instructional advice for me to have to worry about that, though.
		As you take the racquet back, your biceps muscle will naturally flex slightly to help get the racquet into the proper position.  But when you launch the racquet up (bringing it out of the backscratch position), your biceps should be completely relaxed.  After all, you're using your triceps to extend the arm; any residual tension in the biceps will impede the explosiveness of your serve.  Also, it will make your biceps hurt after a while.    This is similar to the dilemma faced by an Olympic weightlifter doing a clean and jerk.  The biceps need to do some of the work to bring the barbell up to shoulder level.  But then, the biceps need to be relaxed as quickly and completely as possible; otherwise, when making the final push upwards, the athlete will be contending not only with the weight of the bar but with the remaining tension in the biceps.  Likewise, when you snap your racquet up at the ball, you don't want any rigidity in your biceps holding you back; you want that muscle to be loosey-goosey.  One advantage of the Braden/Edberg serve is that it makes the bicep do very little work; you use the upper deltoid muscles to raise the arm, and the racquet falls naturally into the backscratching position, with only minimal input from the biceps.  This allows you to develop a very smooth service motion that can fire very powerful serves.  I used it for a while, and my first serve was ferocious; I ended up dropping it, though, because I had trouble developing a consistent second serve.  Who knows; perhaps I should have stuck with it.
		If you want to play tennis competitively, you should really make an effort to develop a serve that will be a weapon.  You can't control the sun and the wind, but otherwise you have total control over the serve; you initiate it when you want, and if you don't like the toss you can let it bounce and try again.  It can be so nice to get those free points when you put in a big serve; you can conserve your energy to try and break your opponent's serve.  I know I recommended Connors' serve for weekend warriors, but I think most analysts would say that it's a shame he didn't develop a bigger serve early in his career.  Not having a big serve meant that he had to work hard in every game.  The fact that he won more tournaments than anyone is a testimony to his desire and mental toughness.
		In the stone age of tennis, players had to keep both feet on the ground until after they'd struck the ball.  Some players (like "Big Bill" Tilden in the '20's) were nonetheless able to blast plenty of aces.  But for most big servers, it was a relief when the rules were modified to allow the back foot to leave the ground, as long as it didn't step on the line or inside the court until after the ball was struck.  This led to the traditional advice to step into the court on the serve, helping to transfer your weight forward and get more "oomph" on the shot.  Later, the rules were liberalized further; players were allowed to jump when they served, as long as neither foot landed inside the court until after the ball was struck.  "The front foot has been unshackled from the chains of oppression," said Winston Churchill, and a revolutionary serving style arose from this newfound freedom.  After this rule change, some players stopped crossing over with their back foot on the serve; instead, they "hopped" when they served, and their front foot landed in the court first.  This new serving style was soon used by some of the premier servers in the game.  The conflict between "steppers" and "hoppers", while volatile, has not settled the issue of which style is better.  John McEnroe is a hopper, even if it is hard to tell his back and front foot apart on his serve (hint: his front foot lands in the court first).  Boris Becker is a stepper; look at pictures of him serving, and you'll see him airborne, back foot crossed over the front, racquet pointing straight down as if he'd gone overboard with the lead tape.  Yannick Noah, who has one of the best-looking (and most powerful) serves the game has ever seen, is a stepper.  Tim Mayotte, a former top-ten player, was also a stepper, and he hit one of the hardest serves I've ever seen during an exhibition match against Connors in the L.A. Forum (the serve hit the corner of the ad court service box, then disappeared down the hallway leading to the locker room without bouncing again).  Ivan Lendl , Stefan Edberg, and Steffi Graf were all hoppers, and they all had magnificent serves.  So whichever style you choose, you'll have excellent role models to use to convince yourself that you made the right choice.  The "hopping" vs. "stepping" debate has been overshadowed by the war of the one-handed-backhands versus the two-handers, which I discuss on my backhand page.
		When you serve, if you step on or inside the line before striking the ball, that's a foot-fault, just as if you'd hit the serve long or wide or into the net.  However, foot-faults are usually only called in regulated competition, such as NCAA or professional matches.  Go to any tennis club or league and you'll see players who foot-fault on nearly every serve.  These aren't beginners chasing an errant toss.  These are players who have taken lessons, worked on their strokes, bought expensive shoes and clothes and racquets.  They've even watched tennis on TV.  But they've just never worried about keeping their feet behind the line on the serve.
		I can only imagine these individuals playing other sports.  I picture them being fouled in a basketball game, and stepping a few inches in front of the charity stripe to take their free throws.  I imagine them in a bowling league, crossing the line on every roll.  Or shooting pool, moving the cue ball a few inches away from the rail.  Here's my favorite: picture them on a golf course, walking a few yards down the fairway to tee up for their first drive, or moving the ball a little closer to the hole for their putts.  Their actions would be considered cheating at any other game; even at the recreational level, they'd be called on it.  Yet, in tennis, it's acceptable.  Go figure.
		I don't want to finish up without paying tribute to John McEnroe for having the coolest-looking serve I've ever seen.  Stefan Edberg's was pretty awesome, too, and Ivanisevic and Sampras have great-looking serves.  But McEnroe's serve is one of my all-time favorite tennis strokes, up there with the Connors backhand and the Lendl forehand.  Thank goodness he had the talent to make that thing work so well.
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