Everyone always tells you that service placement is more important than speed. This is probably true if you are not Andy Roddick and I seriously doubt he reads this so how can you practice service placement? I put a ball in the corners and middle of the service box and I practice serving to those balls. Serving to the deuce court, I hit the ball at one o’clock to hit it down the middle, two o’clock to hit it into the body, and three o’clock to hit it wide. Serving to the ad court, I hit the ball at one o’clock to hit it down the middle, two o’clock to hit it into the body and three o’clock to hit it to the backhand side. This, by the way, may be totally wrong, it’s just how it seems to work for me.

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Practice and Competition Diary: hit for over 1 1/2 hrs.
Solutions Analysis:
1. I practiced hitting the ball at two o’clock when serving. Now that I have patterned myself to watch the ball as I hit it, I’m able to move onto practicing other parts of the serve. If I hit the ball at two o’clock (see image below), I should be serving the ball into my opponent’s body.
2. When I take a ball in the air, hit it before it bounces, I realize that I need to hit under it to get the ball deep into my opponent’s court. Previously I would hit it flat and the ball dropped short if it got over the net at all.
3. I realize that I am dropping my racket head again when I hit the ball. It’s important to grip the racket solidly and keep my wrist in a neutral position. If I drop my wrist, I am not able to use my forearm strength to hit a solid shot. You can’t develop forearm strength just by playing tennis because you will likely develop bad habits from muscle weakness before developing the strength needed to execute the shot properly. To build and maintain strength in my forearm I do a series of exercises when I go the gym.