What's better a left-handed serve or a right-handed serve well it's without a
doubt that left-handed servers have far more advantages compared to right-handed
servers and there are several reasons why this is the case and the first reason why
i lefties have an advantage on the serve is the fact that 10 percent of the population
is left-handed we're gonna see similar numbers on the tennis courts so we as righties are used to
playing other righties and all of a sudden we play against the lefty and the ball is coming
from a different angle and we are not used to these angles and we of course are going to have
a hard time and it's going to take us a while to get used to it left-handed players on the other
hand play mostly against righties and they don't experience that same problem and it's especially
uncomfortable for a right-handed player to return a lefty serve and the reason is that we're not
used to the slice serve from a lefty this is the biggest problem and it has to do with the
fact that when a righty plays another righty and we slice let's say out wide on the deuce side
side that slice serve is going to a righties
forehand so the return player is going to have a more comfortable time
returning a ball like that compared to a slice serve that always goes to the righties backhand
because the slice serve is going to go to the ad side out wide always going to the righty backhand
and if we take a look at the history of tennis there were some incredible lefty servers and
one that stands out is john mcenroe he would drive people crazy with his slice out wide he would come
to the net the entire court would be open and john would have a really easy time putting his volleys
away another incredible lefty serve in my opinion the greatest serve of all time is goran ivanisevic
he had a relatively short career he retired almost 20 years ago and he's still number four on the
all-time ace statistics and remember the atp didn't start counting aces until 1991 and goron went on
tour in 1988 so it's plausible to believe that if they would have counted the aces early on in
goran's career he would still be towards the top of the ace rankings another player with a lefty
serve that's not found on the ace leaderboard but has possibly caused more damage with his serve
than anybody else in the history of tennis is rafael nadal think about this the way rafael nadal
structures his points especially on the ad side he will slice his serve out wide and now the opponent
might try to go for the return and this is a high risk proposition there's going to be a lot
of mistakes and most players will therefore get the ball back in play and rafa will then control
the point with his forehand which makes it almost impossible to get a point against rafa when this
is the case and you can make an argument that if rafa wasn't left-handed he would have a far more
difficult time beating federer and djokovic and the reason is that his go-to strategy the play
that he runs the most which is slicing the ball on the deuce side down the t and on the ad side out
wide would be missing from his repertoire if he sliced it as a right-hander this would go right
into for example djokovic's forehand or federer's forehand and would be far more difficult to win
these points so we established that lefties have an advantage when they serve to us righties on the
ad side to the backhand but can't we do the same thing to them for example on the deuce side we
will we can serve out wide and serve it right into that lefty backhand but you got to remember guys
that the lefty has an advantage because they're going to be serving on the important points for
example 40 30 or 30 40 add in or add out they have an advantage over us because that side of
the court is going to be where all the big points are played and guys it's not only the serve where
lefties have an advantage even from the baseline a lefty can't exploit a righties backhand and the
reason is we are forced to go more down the line with our backhand as righties and this is just
something that we're not used to when a righty plays a righty we can comfortably hit our
backhands cross court and we can't do that against the lefty with a good forehand so the fact that we
have to go more down the line will cause us to make more errors most of you guys probably don't
know this but i'm actually ambidextrous and i have an amazing lefty serve inspired by goran
ivanisevic who's from my hometown of split so let me show you guys my crazy lefty serve
how good was that this is what i do sometimes i switch from left
to right hand and i'm very difficult to break because of that
that was impressive right? actually that was just editing let me show you my real lefty serve it's pretty bad
how about lefties at the recreational level one thing that i see all the time is players
come to me who are left-handed and they have a difficult time hitting a slice serve out wide and
down the t and they also have a difficult time hitting the forehand cross court with topspin and
i can tell you that if you are a lefty it is a shame if you don't master these shots the most
important shots for a lefty should be learning how to slice the serve down the t learning
how to slice the serve out wide and learning a topspin forehand cross court and what about us
righties is there something we can do to make life a little bit easier when we play lefties there's a
few things actually and one thing you can do on the return of serve if the lefty has a good out
wide slice or a slice down the t you can adjust your positioning on the return of serve by going
a little bit more towards the doubles alley when you're returning on the ad side and also covering
more the middle of the court when you're returning the serve on the deuce side down the t and if you do
this you make the angles a little bit smaller for that lefty serve and you might draw a few
more service mistakes and most importantly you have to lose the fear of playing lefties i'm sure
there's a bunch of lefties at your club simply ask them to play and the more you play against
them the more you will get used to the ball coming from a lefty and i can tell you one thing that
i used to do when i had to play a lefty in a tournament or in a league match i would always
warm up with the lefty so it's something that you see even at the elite level if roger federer has
to play nadal he will often get a lefty it doesn't matter even the level of the player he will often
grab a junior because it's very important that when you are facing a lefty that you
before the match practice against a left-handed player and finally one more tip i can give you
the next time you play a lefty is to be a little bit more aggressive when hitting
your forehand to their backhand we have an advantage because our forehand cross-court
which is for most players the more consistent shot is going to the lefties backhand so put
a little bit more heat on that forehand and you might cause damage to the lefty backhand