A second serve as big as the first

Jack Sock is one of the players who has started employing a huge second serve

Goran Ivanisevic called it “Croatian roulette.” Boris Becker said it was “my way of expressing myself.” Pete Sampras did it because he could.

The tennis tactic in question is hitting a second serve much more like a first serve: going for broke in sum. Though the risky move is hardly new – Sampras, Becker and Ivanisevic all retired more than a decade ago — it is in the midst of a resurgence with new stars like Nick Kyrgios, Jack Sock and Alexander Zverev.

“A lot of the young players are living by the sword and dying by the sword,” said Darren Cahill, an ESPN analyst and leading coach. “They are more than happy to throw in a few double faults if they know over the course of time their second serve is going to turn into a weapon for them.”

Tennis Australia’s Game Insight Group, or GIG, has recorded an increase in double faults in the later rounds of the men’s tournament at the Australian Open: to 8 per cent of second serve points in 2017 from 5 per cent in 2013. GIG also has developed a metric to measure aggression on second serve and found a significant uptick in 2014 that has, according to the data scientist Stephanie Kovalchik, “stayed at a statistically similar level since then.”

“It’s a logical response because guys return so much better and are able to neutralise the big serves better,” said Justin Gimelstob, who recently coached John Isner, the 6-foot-10 American who has one of the biggest and best serves in tennis. “The serve is the one stroke in this sport you completely control. Sampras, Becker, Goran, Isner, Kyrgios, Zverev are all big guys with incredible service motions and incredibly live arms who in big moments are willing to bet essentially on their ability to blow their fastball by a great fastball hitter.”

GIG also found that the average rally length on second-serve points dropped to four strokes in 2017 from five strokes in 2016, although that could also be related to faster playing conditions, more aggressive returning or other factors.

GIG’s data shows that the men are now hitting second serves closer to the lines on average, which is also true for the women. But while the average women’s second serve at the Australian Open increased to 137 kilometres per hour (85.1 miles per hour) in 2017 from 132 kmph in 2013, the average speed of a men’s second serve is still at 150 kmph.

Still, some men have clearly cranked up the power. Kyrgios’s average second serve was 157 kmph at the 2014 Australian Open; this year it was 182 kmph.

“It’s high percentage for me to go big under pressure,” Kyrgios said in Miami this year after losing a classic three-setter to Roger Federer that was full of second-serve risks. “Sometimes it comes off, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

It is not just the younger players who are re-engaging in swordplay. Sam Querrey, the American veteran who is having his finest season at age 30, began hitting more powerful second serves than usual in Shanghai this month.

“Sam threw it in, tried it, and it worked,” said Craig Boynton, Querrey’s coach. “My conversation with anybody that is going to do that, and I think Nick does it far and away more than anybody else, is what is your consistency rate? And what is the score line? When you are down 15-40 or 0-30 you are really rolling the dice, but if you are 30-0, 40-15 up and you want to throw a different wrinkle in, it’s a different equation.”

It is also a more favourable equation on a hard court or in an indoor tournament like the Paris Masters that begins Monday. Wherever it happens, a second-serve ace does seem to have a bigger psychological ripple effect than a first-serve ace. “Absolutely,” said Paul Annacone, who has coached Sampras and Federer. “When you’re helpless because of a first serve, it’s one thing but it’s another thing when all of the sudden you are playing Kyrgios and it’s 3-3 in the tiebreaker, which it was against Roger in Miami, and he hits a second-serve 131 miles per hour up the T that is unreturnable.

“To me, you either go, ‘He’s crazy.’ Or you think, ‘Now I’m not even getting a look at his second serve in big moments?’ That’s a huge impact. No. 1, you have to have confidence to do it. There’s a big difference between doing it out of desperation and doing it strategically. When Kyrgios does it, I don’t have a problem. People will go, ‘Oh, it’s a bailout.’ But he’s a great server. He believes he’s going to make that second serve, just like Pete did.”
 

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