Third shot in sharp focus

As the WTA Finals made clear this week in Singapore, the return of serve is ever more a trump card in women’s tennis — a big, increasingly irresistible opportunity for the likes of Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova or Petra Kvitova to crush a ball and snuff out hopes for an extended rally.

“The women have always returned well, but now they return incredibly well,” said Todd Woodbridge, the former star who once headed Tennis Australia’s player-development programme.

But as the returns have become heavier artillery, the defence has hardly rested. While the defining duel in tennis used to be between the serve and the return, it is now just as often a duel between the return and the next shot: the third shot. That shot is often acrobatic, by necessity.

“You have to weather the storm,” said Nick Saviano, the American who coaches Eugenie Bouchard of Canada. “Anybody who works with players at a high level knows you have to be good after the serve at getting back quickly and being able to absorb the big punch that’s coming. It’s become almost like boxing.”

He added: “In men’s tennis, the serve still has a fairly significant advantage, but in women’s tennis there’s more parity between the return and the serve. Knowing that, you have to be ready to go. You have to serve and be ready to cover and neutralise.”Very ready. If you had patrolled the practice courts in Singapore, or elsewhere on tour, and the evidence of the third shot’s growing significance - and excellence - is abundant. Players once hit practice serves without a follow-up stroke, but the trend now is to practice the serve and subsequent shot together.

Wim Fissette, who once coached Kim Clijsters and now coaches Simona Halep, has embraced the change.

“When Kim was doing her service practice, she was serving and taking another ball, and everything went very well and she was serving very relaxed,” Fissette said. “But when you know that when you are going to serve against Sharapova that the ball is coming back faster than you are serving it, then it’s more difficult to serve relaxed, because you already are thinking about that third ball. So I think it’s very important to practice the serve and the third ball at the same time. You see more and more coaches really working on it, and the level of that third ball is improving.”

Modern technology is playing a role. Lighter racket frames have helped players avoid making late contact, and today’s strings allow players to redirect the ball with greater precision from compromised positions and to turn shots that once were doomed to be defensive into offensive shots.

“The strings are gripping the ball so you can get more shape on it,” said Tracy Austin, a former world No. 1 who is doing broadcast analysis in Singapore.

There is also new access to data, provided this season to the Women’s Tennis Association by the German software company SAP. Many players are not yet heavy users of the fast-growing database, although Sam Stosur and Ana Ivanovic are exceptions, according to Jenni Lewis, head of tennis technology at SAP. But coaches are using it.“We are getting more statistics about where returns are landing, and we can use those patterns to anticipate better on third balls,” Fissette said. “That will help in the future more and more.”

Open-stance ground strokes are also critical in the server’s race against the clock, making for quicker transitions and a more stable platform. Modern physical training has played a role, too.

“They usually can’t back up; they don’t have the time - they finish the serve and, boom, the ball is at them,” Austin said. “They have to be flexible and have that core strength. It’s all about using your legs and having great timing, because if you don’t, a ball like that is going to end up in the stands. The key is the abbreviated swing. Take a big swing, and you’re done.”

To accelerate the learning curve in training, a hitting partner will sometimes feed a ball to the server in practice from close range almost immediately after a serve, forcing her to hit the next shot even sooner than she would against a big returner. The goal is to train the reflexes and render the third shot more manageable.

But Saviano says that artificial approach has its limits.

“When somebody feeds, it’s certainly not the same as when you are seeing information from the returner and squaring up accordingly,” he said. "Every little nuance in picking up the ball, recovering and making your split step is important.

“Your split step is predicated on when the returner impacts the ball. You should be in the air when they are hitting it, and then you land and you move. All those are integral parts. So how you train that third shot is critical.”

Halep, of Romania, who is ranked third in the world and is playing in her first WTA Finals, is particularly good at fast-twitch defence tight to the baseline. Others in Singapore who shared that ability included Caroline Wozniacki, Sharapova, Bouchard and Agnieszka Radwanska, whose squat shot - her half-volley from a deep, knee-scraping crouch - has become her signature response to a huge, deep return.

“No coach taught her to do that,” Fissette said. “I would never teach a player to play a shot like that, but it just came very naturally for her and fits her technique. It’s just a personal choice, and she does it extraordinarily well, but I’m not going to ask Simona to copy that because it’s not going to work.”

It is no coincidence that many of the players most adept at neutralising powerful returns are those whose serves — above all, second serves — are vulnerable. Radwanska, Halep and Angelique Kerber are in this category, as are the former Grand Slam singles finalists Sara Errani and Dominika Cibulkova.

Williams, with the best first serve and second serve in the game, routinely faces much easier third-shot challenges — how to put away a short ball, for instance.“The counterpunchers have had a lot of success, but look at who usually wins the big titles,” Austin said. “It’s the power players.”

Fissette sees a day coming when the new patterns will be the old patterns, when the ultra-aggressive return will not be the norm as women’s serves improve and the kick serve, rare today, becomes more common on the second serve.

“You can try to be aggressive against a kick serve, but the percentage is not going to be very high,” he said. “So I’m sure things are going to change. Five years ago, coaches said women cannot hit the kick serve, but now I think everybody realises that when they start using the technique from a young age and train the right muscles, more women can.”