We’ve all felt the fear of the double fault at some point:
- When we’re serving for the match.
- When we’re serving to stay in the match.
- When we’re serving, and we’re the last line playing on our team and all of our team mates who’ve finished are watching us.
Yep… Those are some pretty fearful situations. Our hearts start pounding, and our palms start sweating, and we start praying to the tennis gods that our second serve goes in. And what do we do? We play it safe and just try to get it in, and hope we can still end up with the point, and too often the ball is short and we get what we feared – the double fault.
And sometimes it doesn’t stop with just one double fault. Some people fret about double faulting every time they serve, which truly takes the fun right out of the match, don’t you agree?
Let’s face it, no one wants to double fault – especially at a critical time when it could cost us the match – but you can minimize the dread and gain confidence in your second serve by working on it, preferably in a match-like situation.
Duhhhhhhh… Right? (I see you rolling your eyes, lol!)
Let me explain what I mean by telling you about the experience with one of my teams…
After our Saturday team drills, our pro always has us play a set or two in order to practice what we just learned, while he watches and critiques. And a few years ago, we wanted badly to move up from 4.0 to 4.5, but our serving (or lack there of) was a key factor in holding us back. To be more specific, it was – the dreaded double fault. A few of teammates had a bad habit of getting the “yips” in a match, and literally served more than one match to their opponents with their double faults.
On one such Saturday, as we started our practice sets, coach added the “one-serve” rule, in which there is only one serve per point. Basically that meant we were to start every point with our second serve.
Well, at first we all kind of dinked the ball in, which worked great for getting the serve in, but more often than not, it made us sitting ducks for an aggressive return. A few months later, we were a little more confident and so we started adding some pace, enough to make sure we got it in, but also make it more challenging for our opposing teammates.
And finally, when we mastered the pace, coach had us add spin. One thing he stressed to us (and still does) is that when adding spin to your serve, it’s important to remember that you must hit the ball harder. Often times during a match, nerves creep in and players start worrying about errors – especially double faulting. And whether they mean to or not, they will reduce their racket speed and either dump the ball into the net, or float over a ball for an easy return. So apply racket speed to get spin and pace, and you’ll have a second (and first) serve you can be proud of.
Because of this technique, my first AND second serves are now powerful weapons. I have tremendous pace as well as spin, and I can pretty much place it where I want. I have even aced players with my second serve!
This “one serve” technique is NOT a “quick-fix” by any means, but if you practice it on a regular basis, you will eventually become confident with your serve, and hopefully conquer your fear of double faults. It sure worked for me and my team!