Simple Serving
At Wimbledon, Maria Sharapova seems to have cut down on the double faults that have plagued her for much of the year. When players have serious serving problems, it is usually the second serve that is the problem, not the first serve, i.e. a loss of confidence in the second serve causing too many double faults. For Sharapova, who has scored many free points with her strong first serve in the past couple years, the current strategy seems to be
to take some pace off her first serve and add more spin so that she gets a higher percentage of first serves in and doesn’t have to hit as many second serves. The reason this strategy makes sense for a player such as Sharapova is because when she lost some confidence in her serve not only did it put her on the defensive in the baseline rallies right away, but her general level of confidence seems to have been affected. In her last couple matches, Sharapova seems to occasionally be unveiling her strong first serve again and also hitting some better second serves. Therefore, her approach seems to be helping her regain the confidence in her serve.
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