High Toss or Low Toss?

Editor’s Note — This article was written before the passings of Vic Braden and Dr. Howard Brody, but is still the latest in-depth take on this topic.

For as long as people have been playing and teaching tennis, the question of whether it is better to use a “high” service toss or a “low” toss has been debated. For the purposes of this article, a “low” toss will be defined as any toss that does not extend past the tip of your outstretched racquet, while a “high” toss is any toss where the ball rises higher than your racquet, which then can only be hit as it is descending.

While many experts agree that hitting the ball at its apex (at the top of the toss, or the moment the ball stops moving and is neither rising or falling) is the best way to serve, this has been virtually impossible for people at any level to do on purpose, over and over, with the noted exception of Roscoe Tanner (who, incidentally was one of the fastest servers in the history of the game).

So for the majority of tennis players, the question remains, which is better, a high toss or low toss? Before we can answer that question, it is important to consider what “better” is. Are we talking about accuracy or power? High and low tosses provide varying degrees of each.

Richard Schoenborn, former chief coach of the German Tennis Federation, states the consensus of most experts when he says that tennis instructors must find the optimal serve, not the maximal serve, which is a serve that provides not only a high ball speed, but also accuracy, ease of coordination and a stroke that does not cause injury.

The Low Toss
In his video, The Science and Myths of Tennis, Vic Braden uses slow-motion photography to show the dramatic increase in time a player has to hit the ball if the player serves using a low toss. According to Braden, if you toss the ball “low” (no higher than the outstretched racquet), you can hit the ball while it is on the way up or on the way down, which gives you approximately 33.5 milliseconds to hit the ball. If you toss the ball very high (six feet higher than your racquet), you can only hit the ball when it is descending, which gives you approximately 2.5 milliseconds to hit the ball.

The High Toss
While a low toss may provide more time, Dr. Ben Kibler, a member of the USTA’s Sports Science Committee, points out that timing on a serve is more important than time, explaining that while a low toss provides 33.5 milliseconds to hit the ball, you do not have any choice within that 33.5 milliseconds because the serve is a motor pattern that is ingrained. A higher toss gives players more time to execute their timing, making the toss question a “timing vs. time issue”. Dr. Kibler prefers a toss six inches to one foot higher than the racquet.

The late Dr. Howard Brody, (the physicist who co-hosted The Science and Myths of Tennis video with Braden) agrees that with a lower toss, you will have more time to hit the ball, but points out a benefit of a higher toss. According to Dr. Brody, when a tennis ball descends, it begins to rotate. If you serve a ball which is rotating, you will put more topspin on the ball, which will provide you with a wider margin of error. It is still possible to hit a descending ball which has not cleared the top of your racquet, however, but the higher you toss the ball, the more the ball descends, adding more rotations and more topspin to your serve.

Regarding the increase in ball speed when a toss is descending, Dr. Brody says this increase is negligible if the ball is tossed only six inches to a foot above the racquet, giving the server more than 2.5 milliseconds to hit a “high” toss. A very high toss, however, will produce a more noticeable increase in the ball’s descending ball speed. Dr. Brody favored a high toss — from a purely physics point of view — if the toss is not too high (six inches to a foot).

While physics can help determine whether a higher or lower toss is preferable, physiology may persuade that a high toss is the better way to go. The backswing of a serve uses eccentric muscle contractions, while the actual forward serve and follow-through use concentric muscle contractions. With eccentric muscle work, we are able to store much more power than when we use concentric muscle work. For this reason, according to Schoenborn, we need timing and rhythm which we can only attain when we to toss the ball higher — over the hitting point.

The German Tennis Federation videotaped and analyzed all of the top players during the 1990s and Schoenborn’s belief is that a high toss, with a slow down or pause (hitch) is the preferable way to serve.

Dennis Van der Meer reminds tennis teachers that even when experts are able to agree on a “best” tennis stroke, this does not mean that other variations of the stroke based on certain commonalities are wrong, and in fact may be more beneficial to a recreational player.

On the serve toss, Van der Meer considers the recreational player’s level of coordination compared to a highly-skilled player. Lower-level players often use a Western grip and serve without pronation, which results in a lower toss. While a low toss provides more security for the lower-level player, it takes more coordination for all levels of player because the player must begin to swing to where the ball will eventually be, while with a high toss, the player swings at a ball that is already there. For these reasons, and because the added topspin of a higher toss provides more margin for error, Van der Meer recommends a higher toss.

Finally, Braden stated that based on his examinations of cadavers which have been put through the various motions associated with the overhand (high-toss0 and sidearm (low-toss) serves, the overhand serve motion was observed to cause a repetitive impingement on the rotator cuff which he believed lead to rotator cuff damage, while the sidearm motion does not cause this impingement. Schoenborn disagreed, citing the German Tennis Federation’s cadaver studies which did not find this to be true.

So which is it, high toss or low toss?

While all of those interviewed agreed that a very high toss (six feet above the racquet) is not a good idea, Braden stood alone on the side of the favoring a low toss (no higher than the racquet). Those who recommend the “high” toss generally define it as no higher than six inches to a foot above the racquet.

While there are number of biomechanical, physics and coordination factors to consider when recommending a toss height to a player, the majority of experts contacted agreed that all things considered, a toss slightly higher than the racquet is best for both recreational and advanced players.

Vic Braden’s response to the final draft of the article before publication:
I couldn’t disagree more…the major issue, which takes too long to print, is that we don’t agree on the model. I can get almost any baseball pitcher to hit a 130 mph serve within 30 minutes, but the model doesn’t come close to what the players of today are using. Also, we have done studies showing that one can get all of the topspin he/she needs with an “apex toss.”

As for the arguments against the “apex toss,” the key issue is never discussed, and that is the role of the tossing hand…if the tossing hand goes back with the hitting hand and then releases, as in a baseball pitch using the glove hand as a model (delaying the toss), I can throw a ball one foot out of my hand an have plenty of time to change the motor program.

What’s wonderful about all of this is that I use to have opponents telling me a six-foot toss above the outstretched racquet is the best; at least it seems to have come down five feet or more. I would be happy to participate in future discussions…it’s great.