I remember back when Eleanor Dean played Wimbledon girl's aged 14 on a court with a speed gun, she had a fairly high double fault count, but her first serve was fast for her age - something like 110mph, and her second serve was averaging exactly 99mph. In the same tournament, Federer's was 102mph, Andy Murray 95mph and Nadal & Serena were both at 89mph.
If you consider the relative speeds of their first serves, Men can afford to take a lot more speed off for the 2nd serve than women, so get better control. Some women barely make 100mph for a first serve - if they took 35mph off their second, it would be returned easily every time.
-- Edited by RBBOT on Tuesday 21st of May 2013 05:34:54 PM
Just glancing at Ana Konjuh's first match back after long term injury (currently in a third set against a player ranked in the 200s, so not bad at all), and she has already served 13 DFs. She's by a country mile the best junior in the world. This morning, Bartoli lost serving 10 DFs to an Italian whi served 16....in 2 sets!!!! We all know about Laura's little problem, Ana Ivanovic is similar, Sam Murray gets in on the act....in fact there's lots of very talented women who appear to have this particular problem.....which I didn't notice being an epidemic 10 years ago. It's all a bit crazy.
What's going on? These are professional players at the top of the sport who systematically have the yips on serve. Is there anyone out there who can put me right as to why this is so prevalent in today's women's game, but not in the men's or in the women's game of yesteryear.
I think one of the key differences between the women's game now and 10 years ago is that players can no longer get away with rolling in a second serve at 70-80mph in order to start a rally. The emphasis on power in the modern game means a weak second serve is likely to get punished. Laura's match against Ivanovic was a prime example of two players with suspect second serves against aggressive returns and of course the double faults flowed.
Maybe the emphasis on power means that some of the women are less adept at applying large amounts of spin onto the ball, which is the best way of adding margin for error to the serve without it being easy to hit for a return winner.
All the girls could serve zero double faults if their lives depended on it, they'd just pat the ball over. But that's not the modern game - the return of serve is one of the most aggressive shots in the women's game and so they simply can't afford to serve doddy second serves.
Coaches, as a result, far prefer a strong second serve with higher DF rates than a weak, 'push' second serve.
And, as Tony says, the best way to have an aggressive but safe second serve is to use a lot of top spin. But a lot of girls find this difficult. Which is interesting because it's not a question of height - a lot of quite small junior boys can get the most amazing amount of top spin. But girls are a lot worse at spin and slice than boys in general. I don;t know why - I've been in meetings where it's been discussed and questioned - no one seems to know (left/right brain???) but it's accepted as a fact based on experience. Of course, it means that those few girls who genuinely do see and understand spin and slice can cause huge problems (Schiavone, Radwanska . . .) but the bog standard girls' game is to hit a powerful, flat ground shots, and the same goes for the serve. So there's not much margin for error unless you take all the pace off, which is just another way to lose the point.
