Nothing tightens muscles like a bad service toss. The apparent inability to consistently throw a little yellow ball into the air makes one feel like a complete nincompoop. That tends to precipitate a crisis of confidence that can undermine one's serve and spread like cancer to the rest of your game. This syndrome is perhaps the most egregious and tragic example of the service toss fail. Those stricken with this disease find their service toss flying back over their left shoulders and out of reach, occasionally followed by their racket flying over the fence. There are milder forms of the disease that are harder to detect but ultimately more destructive to your serve. These "tarda" forms of the disease produce tosses that don't seem that far off. They tempt you to hit them rather than just catching the ball and toss again.

The Causes

There are two causes for this issue; bending the elbow during the toss and turning the hips and shoulders back towards the net during the toss.

Cross-linking

Simple enough, but reminding yourself to keep your elbow locked rarely works. It might work a few times, but as soon as you stop thinking about holding the elbow straight, it bends. The reason for the persistence of a bent elbow is a sympathetic contraction of the tossing arm's elbow flexor, the biceps, resulting from contraction of the biceps of the opposite (hitting) arm. This phenomenon is called muscle cross-linking - an involuntary contraction of muscles on one side of the body caused by the contraction of corresponding muscles on the other side.

Cross-linking is a well-known element of muscle physiology and has been implicated in issues as serious as the involuntary discharge of firearms: try holding your right index finger on a trigger then scratch your head with the left and you may shoot off your pinky toe! In the serve toss, cross-linking is caused by the hitting arm elbow bending as you bring that arm up into the trophy pose. Most professional players keep both elbows extended until they release the ball from the tossing hand. The hitting elbow starts bending pretty early in the stroke - well before you reach the trophy pose, so once you start bringing the hitting arm up you only have a very short interval to get the tossing hand to chin level where the ball is released. Thus while you should never jerk the ball up into the toss, neither should you tarry. If you are late to release the toss, the elbows will bend, and the toss will collapse. One solution is to bring the tossing arm up faster. That way it wins the race and reaches chin level before the hitting elbow starts to bend. Another solution is to let the hitting arm go limp from the start of the serve. Don't even try to bring it up until the ball is released in the toss. While it is hanging there, the hitting arm can relax its muscles in preparation for the rest of the serve. That way it can be soft like spaghetti when it is time for the power wave to pass through it.

Snap-back

The second cause for this annoying syndrome is "snap-back". Most of us who are talentless fear the big backswing in every stroke. We don't like to take the racket back too far from the point of contact because we are justifiably terrified that we will miss the ball completely and suffer ever-lasting humiliation. A decent serve, however, requires a pretty massive reverse-rotation during the unit turn. As we enter the trophy pose, we should end up with our chest facing the right back corner of the fence. I don't know if its paranoia at turning our back on our nemesis or some other psychopathology, but I have a hard time cranking around that much. If you let that trepidation get the better of you, you may find yourself turning back towards the net just as you are releasing the ball in the toss. Of course, that habit does not make for a reliable toss. About the only way to keep yourself from doing this, if you demonstrate a predilection, is to keep reminding yourself of the need to complete the unit turn. It also helps to drop the hitting arm down and leave it hanging limply until after the ball release in the toss. This has many advantages including prevention of destructive cross-linking and giving the hitting arm muscles time to relax and create the sought-after spaghetti arm.

Bottom Line

Of all the causes of a bad service toss, the Toss the Bouquet syndrome is the most obnoxious. It results in humiliating, frustrating, wild tosses that tighten muscles and gut your entire game - it is a one-way ticket to tennis hell. Fortunately it is pretty easy to diagnose and somewhat simple to treat with a very narrow differential diagnosis. Even if your toss is not completely demented, it is still well worth investing some time in a tune up. A perfect service toss is an attainable, desirable and pleasurable addition to your game.