The Paddle Tennis Serve

Many players struggle to understand the strategy and stroke production of the serve in paddle. First, players must understand and accept that the serve is not the winning shot. The first volley (or first shot after the serve) is much more important than the serve. But let’s take a look at a few servers from the most recent Boston Open and see what they are doing.

Granger/Baxter vs Lofgren/Hansen

Minute 41:40 Hansen is the first server and decides to serve and stay back on the 3rd point of the match! He must have played his opponent before and knew that the return was going to get crushed. The serve and stay tactic is designed to possibly turn defense into offense when the hard hit return bounces strong out of the screen, or to just simply turn into defense and see what happens.

Minute 43:28 Baxter shows us the underhand topspin serve. He uses this on both sides of the court aiming wide in the deuce and up the middle in the ad. This is to the backhand of the lefty and reduces the angle of the return of the righty in the ad.

Minute 47:32 Lofgren shows us the push lefty serve into the middle of the court and an underhand serve to the Ad side. He is very capable of hitting it harder, but again, the fear of hitting it hard and having it driven off of the screen is concerning enough that he chooses to hit it soft.

Lastly, minute 51:56, Granger shows us a “normal” serve. Hard struck high up in the screens like a normal tennis serve. He eats the return every time, but he also has hands of gold and somehow gets all of the volleys back in the court.

These are four great players and they all have a different way of approaching the serve. Their only goal is to hopefully get some “easier” volleys and overheads from the return. They all know that the serve is just the vehicle to getting to the net and hopefully making the volley into the court safely. Once the make the serve and volley they will have positional advantage and put themselves in a position to win the rest of the rally. The serve is a function of what works for you and your partner.