I've spent several hours reading articles about how Pete Sampras hits his
serves. Here is the link to the articles and a wonderful instructional
website for tennis. http://tennisone.com/lessonshome.html#Serve
There were
several main points of interest. First of all Pete Sampras is considered to
have the best serve in Tennis History. He has accomplished this by having
the most amount of spin on his serves. At a 120 mph first serve average
speed; he also averaged 2,500 rpm for the tennis ball. All other pro servers
who served at that speed had about half the spin that Sampras had. All this
spin gives him extra control and therefore consistency on his serve. I can
serve around 120 mph but I don't think I get that kind of spin. In fact at
that speed I probably have very little spin on the ball. So I am going to be
applying some of Sampras' techniques to my own serve.
An easy tip to try is to have your feet parallel with the baseline when you
start to serve. This will give you much more upper body rotation compared to
the way the average player and even pros lines up to serve. This will give
you more spin naturally. This stance will give you about a 90-degree
rotation. Pete Sampras has positioned his feet for about a 140-degree
rotation on the serve. That will take a while to master. So start with the
90-degree rotation first.