Service Tip from the Tomb of the Unknown Receiver


Sometimes you meet an unknown player in a remote court with a narrow
specialty that makes him a virtuoso of it.  This hot tip from Scott Hirsch
who has a pro drive serve within an overall miserably irritating game:
'You're down-line drive serve used in combination with a cross-court serve
has one nuance for success on the cross-court.  Hesitate a split second in
mid-stroke before you hit the cross-court.  This allows the receiver to
commit a step in the wrong direction (down-the-line), it let's the ball drop
lower which ultimately prevents it from rebounding off the back wall, and as
the ball drops lower it's also contacted deeper in the stroke to deceptively
cue the opponent to the down-line drive. He's caught holding his jock.'  The
limited arsenal has such nasty potency that it wins 50% of Scott's
accumulated points on aces and weak returns against players at all levels. 
This is called playing the 'big game' of a booming serve and follow-up
cannonball forehand, and the only way around it is to pick apart the big
gamer's backhand.