the underhand serve i never realized how much of a hot topic this was until i posted on instagram
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underhand serve of mine and i captioned it underhand serve yes or no and i got a lot of
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engagement on this post and people were extremely opinionated and passionate about this topic so in
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today’s video i’m going to give you my opinion on the underhand serve as a fan as a coach and
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as a player so first i’m going to give you my opinion on the underhand serve as a tennis fan
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so i absolutely love watching somebody do an underhand serve it is something that’s
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very exciting i often find myself rewinding the tape and watching it again recently at the miami
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tournament i saw bublik do an underhand serve in the first game of the second set i think he did
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four underhand serves and one service game and it was very entertaining to watch of course we know
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that nick kyrgios does underhand serves very frequently and the most famous underhand serve
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of all time was michael chang against ivan lendl in the french open fourth round i believe and
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this is the underhand serve that everybody remembers because michael chang not only won
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that match but he ended up winning at the entire tournament and guys the reason why i love watching
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somebody do an underhand serve is because it’s exciting to see the opponent’s reaction usually
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the opponent is so flustered they’re so surprised they’re scrambling up to the net
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and it’s just something that’s funny to watch and this doesn’t only apply to the underhand serve
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anytime something out of the ordinary happens in a tennis match i find that to be very exciting
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and i often find myself rewinding the tape to watch it again so as a tennis fan i love
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watching players do underhand serves as a player in my whole career i’ve never done the underhand
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serve even a single time and this is for a couple of reasons reason number one from a
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tactical standpoint it doesn’t make any sense to me to do a serve that goes i don’t know maybe
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10 miles an hour or 15 miles an hour where my serve is my best weapon and i can often get an ace
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or a service winner now players will often stand further back when i’m serving this happens quite
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frequently and it would make sense to surprise them and do like a little quick short serve like
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that and get them scrambling up but to me this is still a high a risk move because they can easily
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move up to that ball hit a decent approach shot and put me under pressure i am much more
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comfortable to go for that service winner or an ace people often forget that it’s actually kind of
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tricky to do a serve like this it does require a quite good hand skills to get the ball very
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low over the net and make it bounce low on the other side and if someone does an underhand serve
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against me in a match i feel insulted i’m going to get extra motivation to not only win that
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point but win the whole match and this applies to most players it is extremely insulting to receive
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an underhand serve and that’s another reason why i as a player don’t want to use it i don’t want to
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give the other guy more motivation i don’t want to insult him get him angry he is going to want
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to beat me even more so for those reasons i would never ever attempt an underhand serve and finally
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as a coach i would never tell any of my players to employ underhand serves and here’s the reasons
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why while this might work a few times it’s not going to work long term because here’s the fact
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about underhand serves the one thing that underhand serves have going for them is the surprise
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factor so the first couple of times you do an underhand serves your opponent is going to be surprised
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they’re going to be scrambling up maybe missing the ball or giving you an easy passing shot
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however once you overdo it the opponent is going to start expecting the underhand serve
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and they’re going to be able to do more damage with a very weak slow ball and it’s simply going
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to stop working so i would tell my players look even though an underhand serve might
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suit you well once or twice in a match after all it suited michael chang phenomenally well
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i don’t think it’s worth it to do it for the following reasons number one as i mentioned
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previously you are going to motivate your opponent most players will get extremely insulted
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in an underhand server and they’re gonna want to beat you even more reason number two most people
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perceive an underhand service something that’s unclassy or unsportsmanlike so if you ever have
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somebody watching you play and you do an underhand serve you’re not gonna gain
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uh fans from that uh the vast majority of the people will think of you as an unclassy or
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unsportsmanlike player my opinion as a coach is that it’s not worth ruining your reputation it’s
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not worth trying to trick your opponent trying to surprise him of course it’s legal there’s nothing
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wrong with doing it but in my opinion it’s better to win the classy way and it’s not only
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the underhand serve you can for example do the old ivan lendl trick basically bring the opponent into
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the net and then when they’re at the net you could go right at their chest of course this is a really
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good tactic um when you hit the ball very hard right at someone and they have very little time to
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react and you’re going to win the points most of the time but is this something that you should do
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absolutely not it’s unsportsmanlike is unclassy and so is the underhand serve
Is the Underhand Tennis Serve a Good Tactic?
