In tennis when serving, what's the difference between a kick serve and a spin serve?

Question

I am a 4.0 player. I have a pretty hard flat first serve but the percentage is not very high (around 50%). My second serve is servicible but predictable after a while. Sometimes while wacthing tennis the commentators will refer to a serve as "a kick serve" or "a spin serve". Is there a difference between the two and if so how do you acheive both of them to add variety to the second serve?

Answer 1

Spin serve has sidespin.  It's generally the first "second serve" that you learn.  To do it, you want to toss the ball a little more in front of you, and brush around the ball.

The Kick serve is a little more advanced.  Kick serves actually have topspin so that the ball kicks up after it bounces.  Generally, a kick serve will have some sidespin, too, just cause it's hard not to get some sidespin with the topspin.  To do the kick serve, you'll want to brush up the back of the ball.  Because of this motion, you can't expect to hit it extremely hard.  It's great, though, because the topspin makes it hard to serve long.  Use a combination of side spin and topspin, and you should be able to make most or all of your second serves.

Answer 2

Well a kick serve is a serve that spins out of the court and spin serve is down the middle. ive played for 15 yrs and almost nobody knows the right awnser. good luck

Answer 3

My definition of a kick serve is one that has spin that causes the ball to bounce at an angle that is higher and counter to the natural angle of the ball on the court, usually back into the returner.

A spin serve, to me usually bends away from the returner. (Assuming that the ball lands on the forehand side of a player who uses the same hand that you do)  

I would never be able to write for websters ;^)

Answer 4

A kick serve is where you hit the ball from as high as you can with some spin in order to make the ball kick up high into the other players side of the court. The spin serve is just to curl the ball and make is stay reletively low to create awkwardniss.

Answer 5

there are flat, slice and kick (or so call twist) serves.

it is all about the different type of spins.

flat has little or no ball rotation, slice is when you "brush" the ball from outside 2 o'clock position (9 o'clock for lefty) so when the ball spins away from the receiver.

the kick or the twist serve is "brush" the ball from12 o'clock position top to down, which create a vicious topspin that drops quickly over the net and bounce really high.

both slice and kick serve put the receiver in a difficult defensive position and force to hit a weak return shots .

since kick serve clear the net with much higer margin then slice and flat serve, it is ideal to use it as second serve.

if you feel your second serve become predictible, you might want to mix it up with slice so your opponent gets a different look.