A cricketer who bowls a wide concedes at least one run. A rugby union player who accidentally boots the ball out of play at kick-off concedes possession. A snooker player who fails to hit the reds with the opening shot of a frame concedes at least four points. A golfer who shanks his drive out of bounds is penalised. In many sports, the mere act of putting the ball in play is a precise skill which, when mastered and done correctly can immediately put one's opponent or opponents on the back foot. If done carelessly or illegally, on the other hand, it gifts them an advantage.
Tennis is a prime example, so it seems strange that players are given not one, but two chances to perform what should be a fairly straightforward task. After all, it's not like they are obliged to land the ball on a six-pence or postage stamp, although many of the game's elite are able to do exactly that. When serving, tennis players toss the ball high in the air, from where they are only obliged to land it in a rectangular box that occupies a massive 29.38% of their opponent's half of the playing surface. Expecting them to do so in just one attempt is hardly unreasonable. Or is it?
Pete Sampras once said that a tennis player is only as good as his or her second serve and it is a claim that is backed up by statistics that are far too boring to reproduce here in their entirety. Suffice to say, in terms of first-serve percentages (players who get the most first serves in), the very highest ranked grand slam-winning players on the ATP Tour tend not to feature near the top of the charts. Of the most successful players in 2012, Rafael Nadal was only eighth on the list with 67%. Novak Djokovic was 17th (64%), Roger Federer 23rd (63%) and Andy Murray 41st (60%). The lesser-known Alex Bogomolov Jr topped the leader-board, landing 71% of his first serves within the specified boundaries. Currently ranked No93, down from his 2011 career high of No33, the Russian-American has never won a title. The obvious conclusion? Consistent accuracy in the serve is no guarantee of success for a tennis player, so why waste time with two of them when one will suffice?
A decidedly unofficial survey of Guardian tennis reporters conducted for this blogpost produced some interesting findings (and a decidedly heated email debate that, at one point, developed a discernible edge). Our tennis correspondent Kevin Mitchell is emphatically against the idea of abolishing the second serve and thinks doing so would prompt players to power down and make the return easier, a state of affairs that would result in even longer, more tedious baseline bashing. "It would leave the sport with no serve-volley, no opportunity for variation, and a lot more biff from the back," he says. "If you like attritional tennis, this is a cast-iron way to get more of it. No player is going to risk going for an ace if the penalty is dropping a point."
Both he and Jacob Steinberg, who steps out of the football press box to report on Wimbledon and the slams each year, correctly pointed out that the second serve also provides a chance for the returner to win the point, thereby adding to the tension of a good tennis match. We can probably all concur with both writers' assertion that returning serve well is one of the great skills of the modern game. "To get that first thunderbolt back with something on it is something which separates the cream from the rest," says Mitchell. It is difficult to disagree.
However, in the interests of this article that is what we will do. While it's probably true that many players would power down their service if they had just one to work with, more daring and technically adroit players would reap rewards by continuing to send down occasional 130mph screamers when their opponents are expecting nothing of the sort. "The first serve exists because it's tennis's equivalent of a knock-out punch as opposed to the opening gambit in a conversation," says Xan Brooks, our resident film critic and tennis buff, who had plenty of time to ponder the shortcomings of the sport during his heroic live coverage of John Isner's epic 70-68 final-set win over Nicolas Mahut at Wimbledon 2010.
"It also maintains what is seen as the natural supremacy of the service game over the returning game, although this is a slight chicken-and-egg argument," he adds. "Evidence suggests that the punters like seeing aces; it's the ultimate tennis shot. That said, there's no reason why we wouldn't still see aces if the second serve rule was abolished. It would just force the players to gamble more, choosing between the big shot or the cautious shot on every service point, as well as speeding up the game."
read more: http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2014/apr/09/breaking-the-law-abolish-tennis-second-serve
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