Serve plus one: the first ball after the serve is chosen before the toss

The serve as the first half of a pattern

A serve considered on its own is judged by whether it was returned, which is a narrow measure that ignores most of what the shot is doing. A serve considered as the opening of a pattern is judged by where the return lands, and that is a far more predictable quantity than whether the ball comes back. Wide serves in the deuce court pull the returner off the side of the court, so the reply arrives from a known position with a limited set of angles available.

Serves into the body remove the returner's ability to extend the arms, which produces a shorter and more central reply than either corner does. The server therefore knows before the ball is struck roughly which region his next shot will be played from, and that knowledge is the whole advantage.

Recovering to the middle of the possibilities

The recovery step after a serve is often described as returning to the centre of the baseline, which is only correct when the serve was struck down the middle. After a wide serve the geometric centre of the court is the wrong place to stand, because the returner's available angles are no longer symmetrical. The correct recovery position bisects the angle between the two most extreme replies the returner can actually reach, which sits off-centre toward the serve side.

Standing there looks like an error to anyone measuring position against the centre mark, and it is why servers appear out of position in still images. A server who recovers to the literal middle after a wide serve has handed back the advantage the serve was designed to create.

Why the first ball is struck early

The returner is at his most compromised in the instant after contact, since a defensive return leaves him recovering from outside the court. Taking the reply early, inside the baseline, denies him the time to complete that recovery and compounds the displacement rather than allowing it to reset. Waiting for the ball to drop is more comfortable and more consistent, but it hands back the fraction of a second in which the pattern actually pays.

This is why servers step in on a short reply even when the strike is less clean, because position matters more than contact quality at that moment. The trade breaks down when the return is deep, and a server who steps in on a deep ball is caught between two positions and controls neither.

The obvious continuation and the reason it is obvious

The standard continuation is to hit into the space the serve created, which is the open court on the opposite side from where the returner is standing. It is standard because it is correct rather than because it is imaginative, since a displaced opponent cannot cover a full court width. The alternative, hitting behind the returner into the direction he is recovering from, works only when he has committed to the recovery early.

That commitment is visible in the returner's first recovery step, and servers who read it convert the pattern into a winner rather than an advantage. Choosing between the two on the basis of that step is the difference between running a pattern and merely repeating one.

How a returner breaks the pattern

Attempting to hit winners off the return is the least reliable answer, since the server has both position and time on almost every first serve. Changing the depth of the return is more disruptive than changing the direction, because a deep reply removes the server's ability to step inside the baseline. A chipped return that lands short and low forces the server to hit up, which converts an attacking first ball into a neutral rally ball.

Standing further back buys time to make the deep return but concedes angle, so the returner is making the same geometric trade the server made. The pattern is therefore broken by denying the server his position rather than by beating him, which is a slower and more durable solution.