Serena Williams’ iconic service toss: ‘Poetry in motion, knife through butter’

A few months back Venus Williams urged the world to press the bell button and subscribe to her YouTube channel. It’s where she gives tennis lessons every now. One day, she dealt with the ‘How to serve?’ question. Little nuances about where the feet should point, how to use the Eastern Grip on the racquet, how the index finger should slide out ahead from the rest, how and when to lock your right elbow, when to snap the wrs but the most important element was how to toss that ball for the serve.
It’s an art, of course, and as evidenced in even top-level players, it doesn’t come easy. Venus intimately knows the person who has it hard wired in her, and who has the best toss in tennis: her ser Serena Williams.
Rick Macci, the childhood coach of the sers, had noticed it when Serena was just 9. “She had a natural throwing action. Much better than Venus, who had to work on it. Serena’s toss … she keeps her left arm up there like poetry in motion, like a knife through butter.”
It certainly is. A statue outside US Open flushing meadows can be sculpted: the ball rolling off the tips of her finger, her eyes on the orb, the fingers twirled out like a flower blooming, with the hint of the chill-rising threat coming from behind – that right hand, locked at the elbow, the racket threatening an imminent strike. But that’s yet to come, and much of our focus, and opponent’s, is on the fastest serve in women’s tennis, but rewind a couple of seconds to appreciate what allows that threat to be unleashed. Serena Williams, of the United States, serves to Anett Kontaveit, of Estonia, during the second round of the U.S. Open tennis championships, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
The ball sits on the middle of the fingers as she lifts her left arm up straight. “Watch. That left arm doesn’t bend. Easy, fluid, straight,” says the coach. At one point, it’s the shoulder that does the lifting to the height of the eyes. “Unnatural movement, but that helps the ball to be almost still, gentle.” The ball gently starts to glide from middle to the tips. A slow-motion roll, a cradling of an egg.
“I would tell her to pretend you have an egg in your hand, and you are laying the egg on a shell and you don’t want to break it. You want to toss it like that,” Macci, the coach. A soft cradle.
The ball floats up after rolling to the fingertips fluidly – – like a dew drop falling off a leaf. “She had all the time in the world. She never seemed rushed.”
The mind must be thinking about how to bang that racket over for a fierce whack. Yet, it can’t be rushed. On her rare off days, a slight rush on the toss can be seen. But for most part, there is a gasp-worthy stillness as the ball rolls up from the fingertips. If the ball is held at fingertips from the start, and pushed up, they reckon it could impart too much spin that might not be conducive if you desire a flat fast serve. The gentle cradle-roll controls it better, apparently.
Various graphic stats from over the years have shown how Serena’s toss gets the ball to be bunched up together almost at the same spot in the air – just a mere inch or two the difference through a game. Flat serve, kick serve, slice … the toss is identical.

Venus talks about how you telegraph to the opponent what’s to come if the toss isn’t the same, cupping her lips ever so coolly as she leans conspiratorially towards the camera “I am kicking! … the best players have the same toss”
With a few others, with the kick serve, we can see the arch back more pronounced or the toss-ball more towards the left but not as much with Serena. The racket hits the ball at different points – 7 0’ clock for the kick, 3 o’ clock for the slice. Venus says how with the slice, the intent is to take from right to left and with the kick, you have to get it to go the other way, The racket comes over the ball at an angle, the ball-spin not too different from a topspinner of a legspinner in cricket.
“No bending, no bowing, no need to be too humble here, we got to be confident, strong, chest up,” Venus has a mike-drop moment in her tutorial about the need to keep the shoulder up.
Serena comes closest to that Venus ideal. Almost similar toss for everything. Just the contact point of the racket on the ball changing. The swivel of the hip gets her back almost facing the opponent as she then whirs into a frenetic blur to smash the ball. “Biomechanically, you have to get the kinetic energy flowing from the ground up,” says Rick Macci.
Serena’s left arm folds even as she hurls herself into the air and as the racquet comes down close on top of the falling ball, the left arm is tucked into her hip as she squeezes out every energy possible to unleash all her fury on the ball. Boom.
Of the umpteen videos of her serve, the one against Aymui Morita in the 2013 Australian Open is worth savouring for the glint in her eye post serve. The violence came after the poetic toss motion – and she catches the speed on the display screen: 207kmph. The lips curl into the most beautiful smirk of a smile, worth thousands Gifs; the smile of a champion who knows she is a champion.