Why look at serving patterns?
The idea together with Professor Weber was that we already knew that the game opening (serve, return and the first two shots) are very important. Professor Weber, with a lot of other colleagues, already did a lot of research in that area. Actually, way before Craig O’Shannessy did it with a bigger and more easily accessible data. So, it was clear something had to be done on that issue.
We focused on the first four strokes
I did the serving part. So, the idea was to see where do the best ATP players serve? Where do they hit their second stroke to? So, the serve plus one. And that was the first time that was ever done. We divided the service box into three equal parts, wide, body and T. We wanted to see if they e.g. serve wide where do they put the next shot? Is it a serve wide and the second shot to the free corner? Which we call the big V. So, you get your opponent out of the court, hopefully to make him/her hit outside of the double’s alley, to get him/her moving out of the court. Then the second shot, no matter if it’s a forehand, a backhand or an inside out forehand goes into the then free corner, so the opponent has the longest possible way to run.
The most played serving pattern
We looked at winning percentages
We found that the big V is the most played serving pattern
It’s not revolutionary, it’s quite obvious, but now we have the data behind it.
Further the big V is not the serving pattern with the highest winning percentage.
So, if you start out in the red court with small children maybe the first thing you want to tell them about a pattern would be, “OK. Move the opponent out wide and then with the next shot, move him/her to the other side”.
If we take a deeper look into the effectiveness of the Big V serving pattern you have to think about where the return comes back. If you serve wide (e.g. from the ad side) the return probably comes back to you directly to the body. So center return or cross court return. There will be some down the line returns, but most of the time, if you serve wide, you can expect the ball coming back to your forehand if you’re a right-handed player. So, you have to think about what you have to do in order to put the ball into the free corner? It’s not that easy as I have to change the direction of the ball. I have to go to a quite small area regarding the margin of error. I you don’t place it good enough into the free corner, your opponent will have a backhand or forehand on the run, which is most of the time easier than having to stop and change directions one time more.
What to consider when choosing your serving pattern
As a player focus on yourself first. Focus on what kind of serve that you are best at. Second, think about the kind of return that you most likely will get back on the serve. Where are the strengths where are the weaknesses in your opponent’s game? If you from the deuce side serve down the T the chance that you will get a return to your backhand is higher.
So, you have to decide as a player what is more important. Is it more important for me to play my serve to your weaker side, or is it more important for me to get your return to my favorite spot?
So, besides thinking about your favorite serve you also have to think about where to put the serve to get the return you want. From there your serving pattern evolves. It’s very individual in tennis. If you’re a big serving guy, maybe you don’t care about the return coming back. You just want to fire a big serve to the weak spot of the opponent. But if you, are a junior player and the serve is not as much of a weapon yet, it’s much more about starting the point with an advantage. So, if I can’t get an advantage right away with the serve, I want to get an advantage by the serve placement and the most common return coming back so I can start from there to build my point.
Is the big V the most effective serving pattern?
In general, it’s not. In some cases, it is. So, we always have to look at the individual. If I’m a coach, like Wim Fissette said in his interview with you and I’m preparing my player against a certain other player, maybe it is. What we have done here at the Sports University in Cologne is to get a big overview. So, to get general ideas. The shot after a serve out wide to the free corner is often more difficult compared to hitting the first shot back where it came from. So, the easiest second shot for the server is to play the ball back behind. That’s the one thing focusing on the serving player. If we think about the returner, he/she has to come back to the center of the court and has to stop and change directions.
The most effective serving pattern is what we call “behind the back V”
If you serve to the T, your opponent has to move towards the center of the court. So, you have got your opponent in the center of the baseline and then you hit your second shot against the deuce side corner (forehand of right-handed players). So, the opponent moves to the center and has to go back into the corner. We hit where the opponent just came from. Easy shot for you. Tough conditions for your opponent. If you go on an individual level, it always depends.
What is a good placement of the second shot?
In order to move the opponent and have a big margin of error on the court, especially for the serve, plus one but also in the rally we should aim for the C zones. The C zones are located behind the service line, close to the sideline. So, it’s not going to the baseline, but it’s going longer than the service line and going more to the sideline. So, in my division of the court in the 14 zones, I call it the C zones (The picture at the top of the article)
On a cross court shot, you can get a good angle, so you can move your opponent out of the court. You would get a better angle if you go even shorter (the ball bouncing in front of the service line). But you want to have a certain pace in the ball. So, this is the zone where those two worlds come together. You can hit a faster shot if you want to go deeper towards the baseline and you can get a better angle if you place the ball within the service line. In between that, you have the C-zone where you have a good angle with proper pace.
If it’s a down the line shot, you also want to go into this zone because what you don’t want to do is go down the line and miss long. The movement of your opponent will not be influenced by you placing the ball shorter or longer, he/she still needs to move to the sideline to hit the next shot. So, you would want to hit it with a good margin of error above the net, because the net is obviously higher on the outside and space to the singles line.
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