The Underarm Serve: Genius or Ungentlemanly?

Nick Kyrgios performs an Underarm Serve at the Australian Open. Daily Express, 2022

The underarm serve has long held a stigma as being something of a dick move on the court. While that may still hold some truth if you’re playing a mobility challenged weekend warrior in your local tournament, the underarm serve is seeing something of an insurgency in relevancy on the pro tour level.

If you, like me, have been watching the steady retreat players have been making on serve, you’ll probably have noticed the opportunity as well. More and more people are lining themselves up as far back as they are physically able to do, just to get a string on the bombs that are being thrown their way.

Players like Medvedev provide a stark example. Standing deep in the court and using his lanky frame, Medwed uses his movement to get the ball back in play before running up to the baseline to start his attack. This enables him to parry big serves and get him into rally balls where he knows he has the advantage against most players on tour today, but it also leaves a massive amount of room for a short and unexpected underarm serve to throw him off.

Kyrgios best embodied this approach in his match against Medwed at this year's Australian Open, using a combination of underarm serves and fake outs that kept Med guessing and actually forced him to move up in order to cut them off. This change moved Medvedev out of his comfort zone, and you could actually see him struggling to get a handle on Kyrgios’ service games throughout the match in large part because of this battle for positioning. 

I think there are a lot of short ball tactics that may move into the ethos of our game. The serve and volley may even make a comeback. But the underarm serve is still considered the most underhanded technique of them all. But I love it, both for its memeness, and because it can actually be a hilariously effective tool when used at the right time.