Home › Puzzle › The returner is handling your wide serve. What is the alternative?
The returner is handling your wide serve. What is the alternative?
When the wide serve is read, serve into the body. The two targets keep the returner guessing.
Your wide serve into the glass is being returned comfortably. The returner has learnt to step wide early. What is the change?
When the wide serve is read, serve into the body. The two targets keep the returner guessing.
Why
A returner who has learnt your wide serve starts moving toward the glass before you have hit it, and once they do, the wide serve is arriving where they already are. The body serve punishes that: a sliced serve into the hip of a returner who is leaning wide gives them no room to swing and produces a cramped, short return. The two targets together are what make a serve effective: a returner who has to cover both the glass and the body cannot commit early to either. Neither serve is better; the mix is.
What this means at your level
Beginner
Once your wide serve is landing, try aiming at the returner's hip every third serve. Watch how much worse the return gets.
Intermediate
The body serve is hit with less slice and slightly flatter so it arrives before they can adjust. It should land deep, at the hip, on the racket side.
Advanced
Read the returner's first step before you serve. If it goes toward the glass, go body; if it goes toward the middle, go wide. Serve to where they are not going.
Common questions
Your wide serve into the glass is being returned comfortably. The returner has learnt to step wide early. What is the change?
The body serve: into the hip, where they cannot swing. When the wide serve is read, serve into the body. The two targets keep the returner guessing. A returner who has learnt your wide serve starts moving toward the glass before you have hit it, and once they do, the wide serve is arriving where they already are. The body serve punishes that: a sliced serve into the hip of a returner who is leaning wide gives them no room to swing and produces a cramped, short return. The two targets together are what make a serve effective: a returner who has to cover both the glass and the body cannot commit early to either. Neither serve is better; the mix is.
Why not serve harder, so they cannot step wide in time?
There is no harder in padel: the serve is underarm at waist height and the returner has all day. Change the target, not the pace.
What should a beginner do here?
Once your wide serve is landing, try aiming at the returner's hip every third serve. Watch how much worse the return gets.
How does this change for an advanced player?
Read the returner's first step before you serve. If it goes toward the glass, go body; if it goes toward the middle, go wide. Serve to where they are not going.
Puzzles like this one
Both of them are at the net. What is the highest-percentage ball?
Only the lob moves a net pair backwards. Everything else invites them forward.
beginnerYou have served. Where do you go?
In padel you serve in order to get to the net. Serve, then go.
intermediateWhat do you do with the return of serve?
The return lob is how the receiving pair steals the net. Aim over the player who is still moving.