Serve and volley: Tennis Masterclass by Patrick Mouratoglou | Episode 8

Today I want to teach you a great tip to win the most important points during the matches. It's called serve and volley. Lately Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz have used the serve and volley at key moments in some of the most important matches they played this year to surprise the opponent and win those points. In the past, until the end of the 90s, serve and volley was really a game style and you had players who were specialists of serve and You know them because a lot of them became super famous and great champions. I can name Yannick Noah, John McEnroe, Boris Becker, Pete Sampras, Martina Navratilova and I'm probably forgetting a lot of them. So it was a game style and the reason for that was that there were a lot of courts that were very fast and when the courts were fast serve and volley was very efficient. Unfortunately, to my point of view, the ATP and the WTA have decided to slow down the courts and to uniform that speed on all the courts throughout the year and because of that serve and volley as a game style has disappeared. Despite the fact that serve and volley has disappeared as a game style, I see two big advantages for you to know how to use serve and volley and the first one I already talked about is because there are key moments in the match and the players who know how to do serve and volley can always surprise the opponent and do something that is completely unexpected and thanks to that win those major points in a match and make a big difference. The second reason is because for the leisure players in the clubs the courts haven't been slowed down and when the courts are fast serve and volley is a killer. Now I want to show you how to do it. Follow me. First question you have to ask yourself is how is your serve? What kind of serve do you have? Do you have a really big serve where you make a lot of winners or do you have a more average classic serve? Because there are two ways to play serve and volley. The first way is to use a very very powerful serve and players like Pete Sampras or Ivo Kalovic they make so many points with the serve and even if the ball comes back they're at the net and they just have to finish. If you have a serve like that then you can go for it. If not it's dangerous because if you serve flat and the opponent is able to return you won't have time to cover the net and the opponent will play in your feet and you'll be far from the net or we'll play on the sides and it's going to be a winner. So if your serve is not like a real bomb and very precise then it's much better to use serve with spin. Why spin? First of all because it's not easy to be precise for the opponent on a spin serve whether it's a kick or a slice and second because it gives you time. Because of the spin the ball travels much slower and you have a lot of time to come and cover the net which will be very important for the first volley you'll have Two players who are great at playing serve and volley one from the past one from the present in the past for example Pat Rafter was unbelievable he was serving always with a lot of kick so he had a lot of time to travel get close to the net and always volley way inside the service line. In the present lately whether it's Novak Djokovic or Carlos Alcaraz they they are able to serve with a lot of spin and actually a lot of time they serve and volley on second serves on kick second serves and again this gave them the opportunity to get close to the net for the first volley. If you have a big serve like Jean-Leonard Struff then you can serve and volley hitting the ball flat and hard. Now a few hints about where to serve considering where the opponent is positioned. If the opponent is positioned very far from the baseline like for example Daniel it's very efficient to serve and volley with a slice out wide or a kick out wide on the outside slice out wide on the deuce side kick out wide on the outside. Why? Because the fact that the opponent is far he will have to make a lot of steps to get to the ball he's going to be really far outside the baseline it's going to be very difficult for him to hit a good shot from there on both sides so you'll have an easy second volley and actually Novak has done it a lot in the final of the US Open against Daniel Medvedev with a lot of efficiency. Now if the returner is close to the baseline I would say that the most efficient serve to play serve and volley will be a slice to the body because it's close he won't have a lot of time to move around the ball and it's going to be very uncomfortable to return and then you probably will have a volley easy but I mean by easy hitting over the net. In any case you have to vary your serve it's important that the opponent should not know where you're going to serve otherwise it's going to return really well and you'll have a very difficult ball to volley. And finally of course it will sound like an evidence but if you can scout one of the side that is weaker on your opponent's return whether it's forehand or backhand of course you should abuse serving and volleying on that side. If I have to summarize serve and volley it's quite simple it's serve sprint split step sprint. The first sprint is to run as fast as possible and to be able to split step inside the service box that's the role of the first sprint. Once you split step in the service box you hit your first volley and then you sprint again to be able to have the second volley as close to the net as you can. Now how to position yourself laterally that means when you serve and volley and you split step you have to know where you should do your split step we know it's inside the service box but is it more to the left more central or more to the right it depends on where you serve and there is a rule when it comes to coming to the net and the rule is this one it's very simple you follow your ball so if I serve on the tee and I follow my ball I will split step on the tee. The more I'll serve out wide the more I will follow my ball and the more out wide I will be here can be here can be even here if I serve very short with slice and what is true in this box is true in the other box. The reason for this positioning is quite simple to understand you don't know where your opponent is going to play so you have to be able to be at the exact same distance the right and to the left to the best shot that your opponent is playing so if you follow your ball you're technically always on the same distance on both of the shots that your opponent can play. This is one of the basics of tennis tactics and you can watch my master class that explains everything about it. A few words about movement and this is very subtle the first thing you do is running after you serve and running and sprinting running as fast as you can again to be able to split step inside the service box once you split step you really have to stop for a millisecond but you really have to stop because you don't know where the ball is going can go right can go left and if you are still in motion and the ball goes the other way you have no chance to reach it so for one split second you have to be able to be completely still so you can choose your side okay so you stop and right after you stop you choose a side where the ball is coming you follow the ball you come to the ball you volley while you volley it's very important not to be static if you are static the ball is going to fly you have to have your body weight come with the ball so you're going to volley and make one or two little steps with it so you volley dynamic that's very important once you've made those two little steps and it's not about sprinting through the ball this you cannot do so you stop and you start moving again with the ball once the ball leaves your racket you start sprinting again for the next split step that hopefully will be very close to the net so you can close it and finish the point on the next one when you split step you have to stop for a millisecond but it doesn't mean that you have to volley static you have to still volley dynamic now where to volley first volley and second volley on your first volley there are good chances that the ball is going to be lower maybe even under the net it's not an easy volley you have two options the first option is to play to volley deep and it's the best option by far and you will volley in a place where you can cover the net well if you volley if you're here and you volley far from you you will have to run fast and cover this distance and not sure you're going to have time for that so it's always easier to volley in front of you and deep the second option is to drop volley but from that position it's not easy once you've made your first volley and if you volley deep enough then you'll be able to run fast split step and have a second volley where you'll be able to hit the ball over from over the net why because as you are close to the net before the ball drops you'll be able to hit it so you'll hit it the ball will come from that position come here go over the net and then drop but as you are close you'll be able to hit the volley before it drops when you volley from a position above the net the best volley is always short cross because the distance between the player and this ball will be so big that he has almost zero chance to catch it first volley very deep second volley short cross now when to use it i might surprise you but i would advise you to use servant volley even if it's not your game in the pressure moment when you are stressed why because when those moments happen the thing you don't want is to start thinking and when you when you have a lot of time to think because you play slowly then it's the moments when you make the wrong choices all the time when you play servant well you don't have time to think you just have to serve run boom so in a way it's easier and it's great because those moments of tension are probably moments of tension also for your opponent and in his case you can think the same he will he will not have to think that's true but he will be surprised and when you are stressed if the opponent does something you don't expect there is a good chance that you're going to miss so for me in those moments this is when you have to use it and if you look at the matches that Novak played lately and he won whether it was in Cincinnati or at the US Open on most of the big points he did this and even though he's not a natural servant volley player he was so efficient on it just a few tips about how to work on servant volley I think the most important thing the first thing you have to learn is to serve and split step inside the box so you don't need anybody on the other side of the court you just serve run and split step make sure that you progress in the speed in which you run from behind the baseline to inside the service line and once you've done a lot of that you can start to have someone returning once the ball leaves his racket and lands you have to be able to be in the service box that's the second step and the third step then you can start to make your first volley and learn to volley in front and deep in front of you and deep and then you can do first volley and second volley first volley deep second volley short cross so once you've done all these things one after the other one then you can put them all together servant volley inside the service box for the split step first volley deep center second volley short cross if you like this video don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel and don't forget also to watch all my shorties there are a lot of tips on have volleys low volleys all kind of volleys and it's going to be very useful when it comes to servant volley