We’ve heard a lot about women serving lately. The central question is simple: Why can’t they do it? Thus far the answer has been equally simple: No one really knows. In recent years, though, a story that’s almost as mysterious, but which is mentioned much less often, has been running along a parallel track with that one. Why are the men serving so well?
On opening night at Flushing Meadows, John McEnroe hit on the subject with his usual incredulous perceptiveness. He rightfully couldn’t believe that Andy Roddick was routinely bombing the ball in the 130s and even 140s while maintaining a first-serve percentage in the low-80s for much of the match. McEnroe and his brother Patrick agreed that they had been happy to keep their percentages in the 60s when they were on tour two decades ago. They didn’t even need to mention that they were serving a good 30 mph slower than a typical Top 20 pro does today.
“It’s ridiculous,” says Paul Annacone, former coach of Pete Sampras and Tim Henman, and a former serve-and-volleyer himself. “That kind of pace with that kind of consistency was unheard of in the past.”
Roddick is a special case in many ways. Aside from Ivo Karlovic, no one owes as much to one stroke. Roddick is currently tied for third on the ATP’s list of first-serve percentage leaders behind Potito Starace and Fernando Verdasco, two guys who don’t serve with anything like his pace. At the same time, Roddick is second in aces, but the guys who join him on that list, Ivo Karlovic, Sam Querrey, and Roger Federer, can’t hang with him when it comes to first-serve percentage. Throw in the fact that Roddick is also the co-leader, with Federer, in second-serve points won (right behind them is Rafael Nadal—maybe you really are only as good as your second serve) and you can see that Roddick is a renaissance man when it comes to his signature shot.
But he isn’t the only one doing good things with it. While the ATP doesn’t consistently keep the stat, the double fault is rare among top players today. Federer and Nadal played for 5 hours and 5 minutes, into a fifth-set tiebreaker, in the 2006 Rome final, and committed, as I recall, less than four between them (I can’t find the number). In their 20 matches, Federer and Nadal have played more than 4900 points and committed a total of 88 double faults combined. On a wider scale, few crucial points are decided by doubles. This only made Federer’s miscue to lose to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Montreal this summer that much more shocking.
You’ve always needed a competent serve to survive on the men’s side—that’s nothing new. But even guys like Nadal, Juan Martin del Potro, and Andy Murray, none of whom started their careers with flawless deliveries, have smoothed the hitches and made their serves into either fierce weapons, like del Potro’s and Murray’s, or deceptively tricky point-starters, like Nadal’s. It seems that, at the very least, a solid serve is more attainable than ever, if you’re willing to work for it.
“As the equipment changed,” Annacone says, “the serve and return have evolved together. The returns got better, which kept people from volleying as much, but to get any kind of edge you need a serve that can at least move your opponent out of position and stay out of his strike zone. If you can’t do that, the guy who’s returning is going to be all over you.”
As for the increased control at higher speeds, and the decline of the double fault, Annacone offers more prosaic answers. “The guys are taller now, which helps, and they’re smoother and more coordinated than the really tall guys were in past generations.” As for the improved quality of the second serve, “I think that has to do with the strings,” he says. “The guys are using Big Banger [Luxilon’s stiff poly], which gives you more spin to pull the ball down. Just like with ground strokes, you can hit harder but still safely. And you also don’t have to worry about the other guy coming in on your second serve. That takes some pressure off.”
Watching Federer and Djokovic serve up close, a viewer might be more impressed by their second deliveries than their first. Djokovic’s rotates heavily, seeming to pick up spin as it goes, and jumps forward off the surface. Federer generates a startlingly high bounce with seemingly little effort. So why can’t the women, who also, after all, are the product of the same evolution and can take advantage of the same advances in equipment, serve with the same increased competence?
The answers vary. There’s not as much spin in the women’s game, and full-blooded, high-bouncing kick serves are fewer and farther between. But while the women can struggle with their motions, it would be wrong to say that the men are all technically efficient. Walking around the Open today, you could see Mikhail Youzhny lope toward the baseline to start his delivery and Roddick himself take a tiny step backward with his front foot to begin his. Then again, there were also serves of beauty on display: James Blake’s statue-like balance after his ball toss; Robert Kendrick’s diving topspin serves into the far corners; Tommy Haas’ flowing forward motion; Sam Querrey’s brutal yet natural, throw-ball-up, hit-ball-hard approach; even Robin Soderling’s towering bludgeon job. There were bombs going off all over the grounds.
The women offered a sketchier picture. Dinara Safina was her usual elaborate and laborious self, while Jelena Jankovic and Sabine Lisicki, both products of the Bollettieri academy, each lost power midway through their motions—they led with their hips as they tossed the ball and didn’t explode upward after that. A coach told me recently that some women have trouble controlling their tossing arms; like the nose of an elephant, it can travel too far back after they release the ball and push their upper bodies out of kilter. I noticed something like this Tuesday as Anastasia Pavyluchenkova sent ball after ball into the bottom of the net in her loss to Melanie Oudin.
But that relatively arcane technical glitch can’t explain the disparity that has opened up between the men and women. Like everything else in tennis, the serve begins in the head and ends on the strings—you might look in those two places for explanations. As it has with ground strokes, racquet technology has allowed women to go for a lot more on their serves, but hasn’t allowed them to do it with as much safety and variety as the men. Watching them try to negotiate this precarious balance, I got the feeling today that it has left many of the women in a nether zone, confidence-wise. When they get nervous, they fall right through it. The power game on the WTA side has also shifted the advantage to the return. The women are playing defense when they serve, which makes them even more jittery.
The opposite is true for the men; they know their second serve has their back. On Wednesday night Roger Federer was full of that self-assurance, taking virtually no time between points or between first and second serves, even though his match with Simon Gruel was a tight one. I thought: Why should he worry? What could possibly go wrong? How could a serve be any more simple and smooth than Federer’s? Well, the one that followed his into Ashe Stadium came close. Like Federer, Serena Williams makes the serve look preposterously easy and clickingly rhythmic—toss ball where you want, hit ball where you want. And as with the rest of the women’s game right now, her serve is still an evolutionary leap ahead of everyone else’s.