Learn from Elena Dementieva's Serve Odyssey

Following up on her Olympic gold medal in singles, Elena Dementieva has now secured a spot in the US Open semifinals. A huge part of her success this summer has been the dramatic improvement in her serve. Elena's groundstrokes and movement have always been outstanding, but she had fallen into the habit of almost always tossing the ball much too far to her right and trying to hit the only serve that works with such a toss, the extreme slice. The extreme slice serve is a great tool, but one that should be used sparingly. Because its spin is nearly pure slice, it has no topspin to help the ball drop into the service box, and because it's met lower, it can't be hit with nearly as much power as the topspin-slice serve, which is the standard first serve at the advanced level. Elena has removed a major weakness from her game by learning to toss the ball less to her right and also less forward, which allows her to hit up more on the ball and thus take advantage of topspin by clearing the net with a greater margin of safety. If your serves tend to hit the net too often or usually go long when you try to hit with full power, try tossing the ball less forward and less to your right and brushing up the back of it with your strings. You might even try hitting a serve as close to a twist serve as you can manage. Once you get a good feel for incorporating topspin into your serve, you'll be able to hit it harder and more consistently.