How the Russian Top Tenner works around her weak serve.
1. Accept your shortcomings. Elena Dementieva has a lot going for her on the tennis court. She’s strong, athletic, and one of the best movers in the women’s game, and her ground strokes are outright weapons. But her serve is a signi? cant liability. Not only does she have dif?culty doing anything with it offensively, she often struggles just to get it in.
But to her credit, Dementieva doesn’t let it bring her game down. She’s learned to work around it. Impressively, she wins matches even when her ?rst-serve percentage is low and she’s piling up double faults. This is a great lesson for club players, who typically have de? ciencies in their games and lose con? dence when their weaknesses are exploited.
Dementieva knows what she does well, understands how she wins and loses points, and doesn’t allow herself to be overcome by frus-tration when an opponent picks on her serve. She realizes that there’s more to her game than just one shot.
2. Work on your strengths. Dementieva strikes the ball and moves so well that she can win despite her poor serve. In fact, unless her opponent hits a win-ning return she can often neutralize the point or even take charge of it on the next ball because she places herself in such good position. On the practice court Dementieva devotes plenty of time to keeping her strengths ? nely tuned. The lesson for you is that even if you have a weak-ness in your game—and who doesn’t?—you can still play effective tennis by perfecting the things you do best.
If movement is your strong suit, keep yourself in tip-top shape. If your baseline game is your forte, hone your ground strokes with lots of drills. Whatever your strengths are, don’t neglect to prac-tice them; otherwise they’ll cease to be strengths. Also, be aware of the opportuni-ties created by your weap-ons. Dementieva has im-proved her net game and now looks to put away weak shots with volleys more of-ten than she once did.
3. Minimize your weaknesses. Dementieva knows her serve is a liability and is working to make it better, but change doesn’t happen overnight. In the meantime she does what she can to reduce the negative impact it has on her game.
One thing she does well is anticipate where her op-ponent is going to hit the return of serve. You can make up for a weak serve by positioning yourself according to the placement of the ball. For example, if you serve up the middle, stay in the center of the court. But if you serve out wide, take a couple of steps along the baseline in the direction that you hit the ball. This will put you in a better position to cover all of your opponent’s likely returns.
Also, make sure you focus on placement rather than power. Learn to hit either corner of the service box from both the deuce and ad courts, with your ?rst and second serves. Accuracy is often all you need to get your op-ponent out of position and create an opening to exploit. A great drill for this is to play a game to 11 in which you get only one serve and you have to tell your practice partner where you’re go-ing to place the ball. This forces you to work on your consistency, placement, and anticipation.