Serve Return Disasters

“You can’t return that serve!”
“I’m sorry!”
“You can’t!”
“I don’t care if you pay me $1000 for this secret 1-hour lesson. You can’t consistently return that deep spinny sidespin serve with 10 variations because you don’t have real strokes. You are trying to chisel and block back those serves that are 2000 rpms, and it isn’t going to happen.”

This is the conversation with many new students that I get on a daily basis.

I don’t leave them hopeless…
This is what I tell them.

“I’ll teach you to develop real strokes – real loops, pushes, chops, flips. Once you learn real strokes and learn to generate your own spin, returning those serves will seem relatively easy. We need to put together a 12-month training plan through group lessons and private lessons and I promise that you will be returning those serves within 12-months!”

Works like a charm!

Once the players learn to develop real strokes, the spin becomes more manageable. So what about you? Are you at the stage that you are just trying to bump Alex Penkhasov’s serve back to the other side? If so, it is going to be a long and discouraging battle. If you want to be a good player long term, then temporarily forget about the serve return and learn real strokes. Once the real strokes are in place, the serve return will be much easier because now you have the TOOLS to return them!

Samson uses the Nittaku Acoustic Carbon Large Grip Blade with Nittaku FastArc G1 rubber on both sides along with Nittaku 3- Star Premium 40+ balls.