Serving revelation | Advanced - General Q&A | Discussion Forum

Following gingerphil79's story about his serve I thought I'd share what happened to me last night.

I considered my serve to be fairly solid, decent short serve and good variation with the flick, basically nothing fundamentally wrong. The only slight idiosyncrasy is that I would stand left foot forward, rather than the usual right. When I used to serve forehand I would be left foot forward and so when I taught myself to serve backhand my feet didn't change. I had looked into whether this might be a problem but the only feedback I could find was that standing right foot forward allows a bigger swing of the racket, I don't need this so I didn't change.

Last night my team captain said he thought I was limiting my ability to move quickly left due to my stance as I was having to bring my right foot forward to then push my body left, instead of pushing off in one move. On thinking about it he was right, I would either risk overbalancing and sacrifice my body position to hit the shuttle, or have to do a very small quick split step to then push off in balance. Neither option is ideal so I switched feet and was amazed at the difference.

The first difference was as expected, my service action naturally brought the left foot forward so my feet ended up more or less level to react to the return of serve. The unanticipated difference was that now my whole body was behind the serve, which meant I found a much more consistent power to my serve. Left foot forward I was all arm in my serve, so any tension in my arm would limit my ability to serve. Right foot forward and my whole body is behind the power making it much more consistent.

It's still early days and it feels very odd being right foot forward on the serve for the first time ever, but I am excited at the prospect and having a stronger serve for the new season.

I think this really shows the importance of having people who can look at your game as I never realised this could be an area that I might need to work on.