The return of serve: TENNIS MASTERCLASS by Patrick Mouratoglou, EPISODE 1

Listen, no serve is impossible to return. In today's game, serve is not anymore the most important shot, but a second most. Look at Rafa, Novak or Andy Murray, and on the women's side, Simona Halep or Iga Skwiontek. They are decent servers, but they're exceptional returners. And you can learn to take away fully the advantage of the opponent's serve. It's just a question of using the right technique. So come with me, I'm going to teach you how to enter in the opponent's mind. First of all, you need space between your feet because you'll have to move extremely fast. A good way to know which distance between your feet you need to have is to put your racket on the ground and put one foot on each side of it. So you have to be low on your legs, bend your knees with the right distance between your feet in order for you to be extremely reactive in any direction. Now we're going to take care about the upper part of the body. What is important is to have the racket perfectly centered because you don't know if the ball is going to come to your forehand or your backhand. One of the most common mistakes is to have the racket going a little bit on one side because then it's going to be very difficult to go the other way if the opponent serves the backhand. So be perfectly centered. What is very important too is to have the elbows a bit further from the body. Why? Because you will have to open your shoulders and your racket will have to be in front of you. If you're too close, once you turn your shoulders, your racket is too far back. So always have a little distance, let's say 10 to 15 centimeters away from your upper body and make sure your elbows are not touching your upper body. Now the left hand. A big question is always what kind of grip should I have to return? The most convenient for you to be able to react fast on both sides. If you have a 200 backhand, it's easier to have a forehand grip and put the second hand on it because you can hit a backhand like this and you can hit a forehand like this. If you have a 100 backhand, there are three ways actually. The first way is to have a forehand grip but then you'll have to change very fast if you have to execute the backhand. The second way is to start with a backhand grip and you'll have to change very fast if you have to perform a forehand. The last way to do it is to have a continental grip and adapt a little bit right or left considering where the serve is going. Most of the players have a different way to handle the grip for the return. When you have a 200 backhand, I think it's the easiest way to return. The other thing that is very important is to be standing still. The less things are moving, the easier it's going to be to focus on the ball and chase it. If you are moving, it's going to become extremely difficult to be accurate and to see the ball very fast. So that's the position. Now, you're not going to wait standing still. But the main reason why you're going to move is because you will want to, in a way, lean on the ball and throw your body through the ball when you return. Where shall you be? Actually, there are two ways to return. You have the guys like Novak Djokovic or Andy Murray who return relatively close to the baseline and you have the other guys who are extremely far back. Medvedev or Nadal make almost a normal swing to return because they're so far back that they have the time. But the ideal way to return a first serve is to be closer to the baseline and make a shorter swing. Let's say that the ideal position is two to three meters back from the baseline. One, two, three. This is where I start from and we're going to make a split step forward that's going to bring me a bit closer to the baseline. The split step is extremely important. There is not one way to make a split step. Actually, if you look at two of the best returners of the history, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, their split step is completely different. The first way to do the split step is just to jump forward Novak's way. He makes quite a short jump forward. The other way to do it is the Andy Murray style. He puts one foot forward, leans on it and jumps forward. But the idea is to bring your body from the back to the front and then once you're in touch with the ball, you continue. Now, when to do it? And this is a real question. The idea is to land right before the ball gets out of the opponent's racket. Because once you land, it's going to be time to take a decision whether you go right or left. And you have one millisecond to see the ball go out of the opponent's racket and then take the decision. So you split step, the ball goes out of the opponent's racket and you start moving. I'm going to explain in terms of East and West where you should stand. There is a rule in tennis is that you always have to stand, whether it's for returning or for playing from the baseline, in the center of the two best shots that the opponent can hit. This is true for when you play a rally, it's true also for the return. If you consider that the best serve that the opponent can serve is going to hit the ground here, you draw a line and you realize that the ideal serve from him will bring you here. You'll have to return from this position. Once you have this position, you look at the ideal serve on the other part of the box and if you draw the line, you land here. So from here to over there, you have to place yourself in the center. So you have the same amount of steps to make to go to this one or this one. So if you look at the tram lines, the singles tram line, you position yourself inside the court and far back, which positions yourself around here. If the opponent is extremely good at hitting this one, you can move a little bit there. If he's extremely good at hitting the serve on the tee and he loves it, you can move here. And if he's able to hit the tee with slice in it, which brings the ball even further, you can move a little bit here, even more. So this is how you position yourself always in the center between the two best shots of the opponent. Now on the deuce side, we're going to do exactly the same exercise. We're going to think about the best serve of the opponent and on the deuce side, you have the slice serve. On the slice serve, when you have a good server, the guy is able to serve short with a lot of slice. When he serves short with a lot of slice, the ball is going to go all the way to the right, which means that your position as a returner has to be much more inside the tram lines than on the other side, except if the other guy hits a kick serve on the other side. But if you look at the side of the court, your position has to be in general centered. When you're standing here, you're almost at the same distance between the two ideal shots of your opponent. One of the most common mistakes that I see about return is players who achieve a normal forehand or a normal backhand. A return on first serve cannot be a normal shot. It's as extreme as if I would try to execute a normal forehand being at the net instead of doing a volley, simply because the ball comes much too fast. I always compare a return rather with a volley than with a normal shot. Why with a volley? Because when you hit a volley, you hit a very compact and short swing, you cut half of the court. You have much less time to react and the ball is coming too fast on you. It's the same for a return. So instead of hitting a normal shot, you're going to execute a very compact, short backhand or forehand. You're just going to turn your shoulders. If I turn my shoulders, my racket goes back, but always at the same distance from my body. Once I see the ball leaving the opponent's racket, the first thing I do is decide whether I'm going to go forehand or backhand, and then I'm going to just turn my shoulders. Once I turn my shoulders, I can start moving. The ball might be a meter or more away from me, so I have to move and I move with my racket on my side. I don't go backwards because I don't move my arms. I just move my shoulders. So my racket is almost perpendicular to my body. Worst case scenario, if I turn my shoulders a lot, a little bit back. But still aligned with my body. The other very important thing when I return is to have my legs and my hands closed. Why? When they're closed, I'm balanced. When they're not closed, I'm unbalanced. And it's going to be extremely difficult to control my body weight and throw it in the right direction if I'm unbalanced. Getting a return means once the ball is in the strings, you're going to drive it rather than hit it. Never hit the ball. Otherwise, it's going to go all the way but probably not where you want to. So you get the ball and you're going to keep the ball as long as you can in your strings because the longer the ball stays in your strings, the more accurate you're going to be. If your body weight doesn't move, you're going to get out of the ball very soon. That's the reason why your body weight has to always go together with your racket. By doing so, you increase the time the ball is in contact with the strings and then you automatically increase your accuracy. Now let me demonstrate the same thing with the forehand. Same starting position. And as I did with the backhand, I'm just going to turn my shoulders. So I'm still in a very compact position. I don't have a normal swing. I'm just here. I'm going to start moving. Once I'm in touch with the ball, I'm going to drive the ball. Only drive. And my body weight is going to come with it. And I'm going to have a very long contact with the strings. Don't hold your grip too tight. If you hold your grip too tight, you're going to lack touch. And the touch is very important to return. Stay light on your grip, but just block your hand. You don't want your wrist to move. Because this again will bring the ball anywhere. You keep it strong, but not too hard. And you drive the ball. You see a lot of players who try to hit a winner on the opponent's first serve. When you do so, you're going to miss most of the time. There is a rule. Once the ball is in your strings, you're not allowed to miss it. These opportunities you have to take to put the ball in play and telling the guy basically, okay now we start equal. I took out the advantage of your serve and now we can start to rally. So once the ball is in your racket, it has to be in. What is the best way to hit the ball in? Think about it. The ball is coming extremely fast. You are moving your racket towards the ball. If you aim close to the lines, the sidelines, and the angle is not perfect, the ball is going to be out. That's why you always have to aim at the center of the court. If you miss a little bit your angle, the ball is still going to be in. And then you have to aim deep. Because if you aim deep, you start from zero. It's the same as if I was feeding the ball deep in the middle and starting a rally, taking away the advantage of the server. So that's the ideal return is deep middle. That's why you see a lot of pros just doing this with the ball returning, a little slice, just trying to aim deep, deep and center. But I prefer this one, the one that I showed you, because with this one, you are able also to create space. You can return deep and fast like Novak Djokovic. That's why he's so dangerous. When you play against Djokovic and you serve, you always land inside the court after the serve. And Novak is able to return deep, center in your feet. What can you do? The only thing you can do is this. And in general, you play short and he starts to control the rally if he doesn't hit a winner on the second shot. Or if you don't miss it, because I can tell you when you land here, you have to split step. The ball is already here. It's extremely difficult to hit the ball in. That's why this zone here, center deep is the best zone. It's the best zone because it's the most difficult for the server. It's the best zone because if your angle racket ball is not ideal, the ball is still going to be in. The statistics in general is how many points do I win after the opponent's first serve, which is important too. But I think a very important statistic that you have to look at is how many first serves of the opponent do I return inside the court? And another one that is more detailed, what percentage of the opponent's first serve do I return in and after the service line? Because those ones put you in a much better position. One of the keys of good return is to start to read the opponent's serve. How do you anticipate? First, because you start to understand how the other guy processes. Most of the opponents have a favorite serve. It can be the tee serve, it can be the slice serve and in general they're using much more their favorite serve. If the opponent aces you a lot but uses more one serve than the other, start to anticipate. When it comes to the big moments of the match, the break points they have to save, the game points they have to make, they will most of the time always go to their favorite serves. And this is the moment for you to anticipate. There are two ways to anticipate. You can see Novak Djokovic doing that quite often. Instead of doing a split step exactly straight, he does a split step to the side because he's kind of anticipating the opponent's serve. You take an advantage. Where most of the other players do this, he will do this on the side, on this side or on this side. Of course not that much but he does anticipating the opponent's serve. What you don't want to do is anticipate with your hands because if you're wrong you have no chance to come back. You anticipate with your body and you can still go both ways but you think for in this example that the opponent is going to serve T. Another way to do it is to block the opponent. Sometimes you see players instead of standing here, for example if the opponent's favorite serve is the slice, instead of staying here which is the normal position, they move here. When they move here they open the T but they know that the opponent is going to try to serve here. By doing so you can enter in the opponent's mind. The best servers in the world like Nick Kyrgios for example have the same toss all the time. Whether they're going to serve slice or T, they're going to use the same toss. It's impossible to get some information to anticipate their serve but the immense majority of the players and especially the non-professionals in general when they want to slice they will toss more to the right when they want to kick more to the left. So if you look at their toss and look at their serves slowly you will learn to know how to anticipate their serve. Now a few words to compare return on first and second serves. It's difficult to compare them in a way because they're so different. A return on second serve most of the time is a normal shot from the baseline. You have much more time because the opponent is dealing with much more spin and this time you can use to have a normal backswing and hit a regular shot, a shot you would hit from the baseline. Your returning position of course is much closer to the baseline but you still do your split step of course because you want to be aggressive on the returns. On the opponent's second serve it's very important to be aggressive. On the women's side they do that extremely well. On the men's side they start to do it more and more. It's important because it's also a way to put pressure on the server. When the server knows that on every on his second serve he's going to be under pressure and he's going to be attacked it's most of the time has a consequence on his percentage of first serve because it touches him emotionally. So stay closer to the baseline. If you can it would be ideal even to be landing inside the baseline after your split step and then you have time to make a normal preparation and go for it. The split step is important because it's going to help you go through the ball and be aggressive and the goal is not always to hit a winner. Of course if you feel you're in a good position to hit a winner go for it. If not at least take advantage. There are three ways to hit a very aggressive shot on the second serve's return. The first one is to go deep fast in the middle. This is a good shot for the same reason as it's a good shot when you return the opponent's first serve. The second way is to go down the line and the third way is to play cross and ideally a bit short because when you play cross and a bit short the ball goes much further away from the server. A lot of second serves are kick serves and the particularity of the kick serve is that the bounce is high. Wow! Wonderful! The most difficult when you return a kick serve is to know where to position yourself because if you're not well positioned there is a good chance you're going to hit the ball over your head and this is really uncomfortable and probably instead of being able to be aggressive you're going to deliver a ball that will give the opportunity to the opponent to be aggressive. What is important is to get close to the bounce. Of course you're not going to be right behind the baseline like Roger Federer when he does his special shot but you want to take the ball between your hip and your shoulder ideally. If it's a bit at your shoulder position that's the maximum. Don't go over a shoulder position because then it's very difficult and for that depending on the quality of the kick of the opponent you will have to be more or less close to the bounce. By hitting a few the returns on second serve of your opponent you're going to learn to know what's the trajectory of his or her serve and then you are going to learn to position yourself to be at the right distance and hit the ball in a position where you feel comfortable to be aggressive. Another thing very important with the technique for the return depending on the surface the head of your racket would be more or less down. The ideal return on a first serve is as I said you turn your shoulders but your racket head goes down. You see that a lot on grass course for example where the bounce is low because the goal is to have your racket head at the height of the ball straight away. You don't have time to go to do a loop so you go straight to the right height. Of course on clay your racket head would be higher, on hard court would be lower, on grass would be extremely low. So again you turn your shoulders and you orientate your racket head more or less high. Low, middle, high. There are two ways to return a first serve. You can return flat or you can return with slice. My favorite is the return flat because you're able to create pace. With a slice it's a bit more defensive as a shot. It's important to know how to return slice because in a way it's easier to control the ball with a slice. You can learn to return it really well with a flat return but it will require more work. It's more natural with the slice to control the ball and it's also a good way to keep the ball very low and against some opponents it's an advantage. But for example when Roger was returning slice against Rafa he was losing the point probably 99% of the time. Because when you slice against Rafa he's turning around the backhand and he can use his forehand and start to make you run and he barely loses the point. So when Roger was playing Rafa one of the key for him was to be able to return flat backhand. Towards the end of his career Roger started to return flat on Rafa's serve and it kind of changed the dynamics between those two. So I would say that players like Wawrinka slices a lot on both sides to return. He does it very well but his ball is very slow. So against some players you deliver a slow ball they can take advantage of it. Against some others who are less able to create pace themselves it's a very good return. And as always in tennis the more tools you have in your box the better it is. Merci beaucoup. That's all for today. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe and leave me a comment if you want me to talk about something special in my next video.