Does your serve look like a wounded duck crossing the net? No matter how hard you swing, does it seem like you can’t get much oomph on the ball? You just might be putting too much muscle into your serve. Tightening your muscles to hit harder only serves to slow down your swing. To generate power on your serve, you have to relax your arm and let it snap like a whip to accelerate your racquet hands much as possible. On the serve, a relaxed, loose arm and grip allow your elbow and wrist to act like levers to accelerate the racquet head through your swing. Then at contact, when you brake at the shoulder, your arm snaps the racquet forward through the ball like a whip, each lever adding more acceleration to the racquet head. The result is faster, more powerful serve. So snap a whip on your serve and you’ll soon be flogging your opponents.
