IS THE SECOND SERVE UNDER-RATED?

Every tennis player has his/her own technique and unique skills that can be used against their opponents in singles matches at the professional or amateur level. The closer a player comes to perfection, the smaller the things that make a difference as to who wins the match. Because tennis is a sport that is dependent more on the ability to learn than on natural skill, it is important that all phases of the game be analyzed in order to improve coaching strategies and the game itself.

1. The serve is the only time in tennis that you have complete control of the ball in terms of position, speed and direction.
2. A great serve can win points outright.
3. A well placed serve can set up the point.
4. A big serve creates a permanent psychological pressure on your opponent. He will begin to think that your serve is unbreakable and this will lead him to believe that he cannot make any mistakes during his own service games. This in turn creates tension in his game and actual breakdowns.

There have been many studies done which are devoted to tennis, but not many of them have focussed on the serve. There are a few studies which look at the biomechanical or theoretical lines of analysis. It is not the purpose of this study to analyze the tennis serve from this point of view, but rather to analyze the serve from a statistical viewpoint based upon actual data.
The purpose of this study was to analyze the importance of the serve and its correlation with winning in men’s professional tennis, by looking at three areas:

1. To determine the relationship between first serve in percentage statistical data and winning a match
2. To determine the relationship between first serve points won in percentage statistical data and winning a match.
3. To determine the relationship between second serve points won in percentage statistical data and winning a match.

I have chosen these three particular service statistics provided by IBM because I think they are the most important to find out the correlation between first/second serve and winning on the ATP tour. I did not think aces and number of double faults are as important because they are already covered in effectiveness of first or second serve statistics.

ALL-YEAR ATP TOUR TOURNAMENT STATISTICS 2003
SECOND SERVE POINTS WON %				FINAL ATP RANKING 2003
PLAYER NAME		PERCENTUAL  EFFECTIVENESS		TOP 10	TOP 20	TOP 50
1	Roddick	58 %		1
2	Coria	56 %		4
3	Aggasi	56 %		5
4	Federer	55 %		3
5	Ferrero	55 %		2
6	Schalken	55 %			19
7	Schuttler	54 %		6
8	Grosjean	54 %		10
9	Hewitt	54 %			18
10	Moya	53 %		7

Eight out of the top ten ranked ATP players (ATP tour 2003 final ranking) were also on the top ten second serve points won list. That proves there is the highest correlation between second serve points won and winning on the ATP tour. Now, you may ask the question “How does knowing this help my game or help me to win?” The second serve points won percentage tells me how well the player can back-up his serve in the following rally and how effective his second serve is (kick, slice, power and placement).

FIRST SERVE POINTS WON %				FINAL ATP RANKING 2003
PLAYER NAME		PERCENTUAL  EFFECTIVENESS		TOP 10	TOP 20	TOP 50
1	Roddick	80 %		1
2	Philippoussis	80 %		9
3	Fish	79 %			20
4	Ljubicic	79 %				42
5	Mirnyi	78 %				23
6	Verkerk	78 %			17
7	Dent	78 %				33
8	Federer	77 %		3
9	Moya	75 %		7
10	Srichaphan	75 %			11

Four out of the top ten ranked ATP players and 3 out of the top twenty are on the list for the first serve in final statistics. As we can see, players win a high percentage of the rallies after their first serve. It just proves that the first serve in today’s tennis is a major weapon.

There is not much proof between first serve in percentage and winning on the ATP tour. It seems that it is more about the effectiveness of the first serve and backing up the serve than keeping a high percentage of first serves in.

Even Pete Sampras once said that it was the second serve that helped him the most to succeed at Wimbledon. Most of the top players have a solid first serve but when we are talking about winning, it comes to how effective their first and second serves are. Every player should work on the effectiveness and not just the consistency of their serves. It is not just a natural talent and swing that got Andy Roddick’s serve so big. It is a combination of his technique, repetition, talent, special strength training and injury prevention.

The more time you spend with the basket of balls, the better your serve will be. If you already have a good serve, work on it even more to develop a weapon that can support you anytime in the match. A good serve will generally increase your self esteem and confidence during a match. If you have problems with your technique, take your time under a coach’s supervision and then practise what you were shown by yourself. Ask your coach how to use different grips to develop variety in your repertoire of serve spins. If you are not able to spend much time on court, practise against a wall.   J.S.