Almost...

Practice, Practice, Practice!

There is no substitute for it, you know it. There needs to be a driver behind it though and an objective. The weakest attribute in game has been my serve since I started. As I explained in my previous postings, I have three different types of serves, but regardless of which I use, I had many double faults that resulted in too many games, sets and matches lost. Has to be fixed.

I have been practicing off-matches, throwing 75-100 serves each time I get the chance; however, most of my practices have been during the round robin doubles matches. Believe me I had my share of nasty looks from my partners in abundance and I cannot blame them. At the same time I refused to back off from figuring it out, dropping my pace, or just putting my second serves in with a loopy. I keep trying and trying, hoping something will click.

I think something did click this month. I cannot tell exactly what it is, I cannot pin point to a single mechanics, but I think few things finally came together in a rhythm that is starting work. Although the starting point for it all to work was, I am pretty sure, the ball toss. I still do not toss the ball to the same place, but I toss it to a location that will yield the placement I am looking for, and it is more consistent at this time. The second part has been increased confidence and focus on a single serve type, and not to mix it in with the other two. I chose to focus on my #2 serve, which is a spin serve and it has been quite effective against most opponents. Third variable has been the pace. Although I believe it is more important to have good placement than ultimate pace, still some pace is critical for the serve to be effective. As my serve % increased even slightly, my confidence shot up and I now serve both 1st and 2nd serves the same, which throws off many of the opponents, particularly the ones that have hard time handling spin serves.

I had a ladder match few weeks ago against a solid 4.0-4.5 player who made very little errors and had significantly better court coverage than me. As usual I was having at least two double-faults during my service games and I had terrible time holding my serve games. Because overall he had a better game than me, I also had difficulty breaking his service games unless I had multiple winners in a single game. Even when I successfully served my #1 serve, he was able to return them effectively. This solidified my belief that not only I had to have at least moderate pace with my serves, but I just had to figure out how to better place the ball, so my serves is not as predictable. I lost this match 1-6, 2-6.

After this match I was practicing my forehands with the ball machine, and as usual I also shot nearly 100 or so serves, focusing on the relationship of ball toss location and ball placement on the service box. Suddenly I figured out where to toss the ball to hit the T on the Deuce court and the wide corner on the Ad court; D4 and A2 locations in the picture below. I already knew how to serve to D3 and A3 locations and about 40-50% of the time I can get to D2. After some more experimenting, now I can sometimes get to A4 as well.  So, now I cover most locations with my serve at will, and I'd love to figure out how to hit D1 and A1 locations, but those will require my spin serves to be able to hit as short as those locations require.

This eureka! moment was the start of something special I think, it set the rest in motion. My next match was against an up-and-coming new player in the club with a record 8 wins to 1 loss in the ladder, whom I had already lost during a club tournament. I knew his weaknesses and how to work them this time around, but as always I was worried about holding my serve games. To my surprise, with the exception of a one game, most other games I had high first-serve % and no more than one double-fault per game. This helped me tremendously and I won the match 10-7. Although in one game I had three double-faults, which was 'usual' for me.

Few days later I had another match with a 3.0 level player, which was not much of a challenge, because I made so few unforced errors and so few double-faults. Again my first serve % was higher than usual, which also surprised my opponent. I still had one game with three double-faults though. All and all, the improvements were beyond noticeable.

Two days later I had a match with a solid 4.0 level player whom I hadn't played with previously. My serves were beyond belief. I had a total of three double faults the entire match. I suspect my first serve % was very close to 80% and the pace of my serves were quite high as well. As my confidence increased, the pace of my serves increased too. Placing the ball where I needed, most of the time, gave an advantage in putting pressure on my opponent. Unfortunately, the rest of my game, particularly my BH shots and CC FH shots were unusually terrible, so I really could not fight using only my serves. I lost the first set 1-6. The second set I was more focused on my shots that worked rather than trying to fix what did not work, and we were 4-4, when he finally broke my serve due to my third and last double-fault, and won the set 4-6.  Although I could not play my best, I was ecstatic about the progress with my serves and was grinning. 

We will see if all this positive momentum with my serves continues, but it is clear persistence and patience pays off. I have been so focused on my serves during practices that I think I let go of my BHs, and now they became a liability. Back to practice court to fix the BH shots without losing the rest hopefully.