Step 2 Tennis Service Return Close on the Ten
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The second step of the service return is to step out with your outside foot, turn your shoulder sideways, and get your racket back. Having hit my split step I step out with my outside foot my left foot in this case because I'm a lefty and I'm hitting a forehand I turn my shoulder sideways and I get my racket back.
Now, when I get my racket back I don't wanna take it as far back as I would if I was just hitting a normal ground stroke because a serve is gonna be coming harder so you gonna have less time, you won't be able to take the racket back as far.
Now, the other thing you're doing when you step out like this is you're moving diagonally into the court because you're trying to cut off the oncoming serve.
In other words, you don't wanna move laterally along the baseline because then you'll have to travel further distance to get to the serve.
So, you're cutting it off and because of that if we look at myself in this position here my foot is angled into the court because I'm moving diagonally in It looks similar to a pivot but it's not quite the same.
And that's why earlier in this section I said you wanna step in and then hit your split step you want your weight moving forward because that allows you to move diagonally towards the oncoming tennis ball.
Let's watch this motion in action I'm returning one of Andre's serves and having hit my split step I step out with my outside foot, my left foot it's angled into the court because I'm moving diagonally to cut off the tennis ball and at the same time I step out, my shoulders turn sideways, and I get my racket back.
Now, I'm taking in my opinion my racket back a little bit too far and that's one of my problems, that's something I need to work on I take my racket back too far sometimes The guy you wanna copy is maybe Andre Agassi he had a really, really, really short back swing and probably was the greatest return that ever lived.
So, generally speaking the shorter, the better.
And especially agains somebody who serves really hard.
If we watch the motion again coming out of the split I step diagonally into the court, shoulders turn sideways and I get the racket back. Now, what we'll do is watch a sequence of pictures of Andy Roddick doing this motion.
Here he is hitting his split step, again, his upper body is in the ready position but in this next picture now what he's done is he stepped out, he's turned his shoulders sideways and he is taking his racket back.
To show how he's abbreviated his back swing let's split screen this picture here with another picture of him with his normal back swing.
You can see on his normal forehand his racket is way back, it's much further back than it is when he's hitting a return of serve and again, it's because he has much less time because the serve is generally much harder so he just has to get it into position and then swing from there.
