Going after your opponent’s second serve creates a lot more pressure on their first serve.
By not missing any second serves, your opponent will not be getting any free points on their serve. Over the course of the game and match the opponent will ‘go for more’ which means playing lower percentages – and therefore eventual errors.
If you are punishing their second serve, they might back off the first serve to try and get it in. This will give you the opportunity to punish their first serve.
Now we can relate to an incident with the Roger Federer versus Andy Murray match in the 2010 Australian Open Final. Federer started to change things up midway and late in that first set when he started to chip the second serve a little bit more. It brought Murray slightly out of his comfort zone but Federer was starting to dictate points with that shot.
From when I played, I’m thinking about Patrick Rafter. Anytime he got a second serve, he would chip that ball and he would come in. It didn’t matter if his opponent knew that he was going to come in or not – that built the pressure. They knew he was coming regardless. So that made them change things up a little bit more, and hit either a slower first serve, which gave Rafter a little bit more read on the ball; or again, if that first serve is missed the pressure is right on that second serve. So it’s something to really think about – put pressure on your opponent’s second serve so that you can start breaking down their first serve.
Pete Tramacchi
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m new to your website and thought I would check it out after reading the articles on Anticipation via the FYB website. First of all great job on the first 2 installments of that article. It was well written, infromative and insightful. If the rest follows the standard that especially Part 2 set it will be a keeper in my file.
A little feed back.
I’ve read through about 5 articles so far on the homepage and archives and have found typos in several of them. The last article I read was “Putting Preasure on your Opponents First serve” by Peter. I found the content useful but did not enjoy reading the article as it was poorly written. Please have someone edit your work before posting.
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hi pete
you are a great observer. I hope you keep doing this and share us
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