How to Improve your Ball Toss in Tennis

When you serve the ball in tennis, you have to use your non-dominant hand to toss the ball. That's why, for most people, the ball toss is the weakest part of their serve.

Because you are using your clumsy, non-dominant hand to do a critical part of your serve, you have to concentrate harder on it, and that throws off the fluidity of all the rest of your serve - your feet, your swing, your timing. It's hard to be aware of anything else.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Tennis balls
• a Tennis Racquet

1. Work on the general hand-eye coordination of your non-dominant hand. That is, if you are right handed, you need to work on your left, and if you are left handed work on your right. Practice a little every day just tossing a ball in the air and catching it with your off hand. Bounce a ball against a wall and catch it. Even do things like brush your teeth with your off hand. You need to build up the ease with which you control that hand.

2. Practice coordinating your whole body by going through the serve motion without a ball or racquet. Since your clumsiness with the ball distracts you from the rest of your serve, just leave it out for a while. Practice a fluid full body movement - step, toss, swing, follow through, split-step. Let your body get used to the movement without distraction.

3. Practice your ball-toss all by itself. Step up to the line as if you are about to serve, and toss the ball up, but don't hit it. Just practice getting the ball to go straight up. Watch where it falls - it should fall a little in front of your front foot. Practice this over and over again, until you can control how high the ball goes and where it lands.

4. Put it all together and practice your serve. It may take a few repetitions to bring it together, but you should find your serve has become much more fluid.