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Your serves keep landing long. What is the fix?
Serves going long: contact lower, more slice. A high flat contact drives the ball past the line.
Serve after serve is landing past the service line. What is most likely wrong and how do you correct it?
Serves going long: contact lower, more slice. A high flat contact drives the ball past the line.
Why
A serve that lands long has usually been struck too high, near the waist limit, with a flat face, so the ball travels on a flatter, longer path. The fix is to let the ball drop lower before contact, around hip height or below, and to slice under it more, which both shortens the flight and lowers the bounce. The slice also makes the serve better, not just legal, because a skidding ball is harder to return than a flat one at the same depth. Most long serves are one bounce-height adjustment away from being good serves.
What this means at your level
Beginner
Let the ball drop a bit lower before you hit it, and brush under it. It will land shorter and skid.
Intermediate
Aim the serve to land a metre inside the line. The slice will carry it close to the line anyway.
Advanced
A serve landing long and wide is the best miss you can have: the fix is a touch less height and the same direction. Do not change the target.
Common questions
Serve after serve is landing past the service line. What is most likely wrong and how do you correct it?
Contact too high and the face too flat. Serves going long: contact lower, more slice. A high flat contact drives the ball past the line. A serve that lands long has usually been struck too high, near the waist limit, with a flat face, so the ball travels on a flatter, longer path. The fix is to let the ball drop lower before contact, around hip height or below, and to slice under it more, which both shortens the flight and lowers the bounce. The slice also makes the serve better, not just legal, because a skidding ball is harder to return than a flat one at the same depth. Most long serves are one bounce-height adjustment away from being good serves.
Why not you are hitting too softly and the ball floats?
Softly does not go long. The height and the face angle do.
What should a beginner do here?
Let the ball drop a bit lower before you hit it, and brush under it. It will land shorter and skid.
How does this change for an advanced player?
A serve landing long and wide is the best miss you can have: the fix is a touch less height and the same direction. Do not change the target.
Puzzles like this one
The ball is coming off the back glass. When do you hit it?
Move back with the ball, let it pass you, hit it in front of your body.
beginnerYou have served. Where do you go?
In padel you serve in order to get to the net. Serve, then go.
intermediateThey cannot play the side glass. Where do you serve?
Serve at the weakness you have found, not at the space you can see.