In 1878, the story goes, Arthur Thomas Myers introduced a new style of serve to professional tennis. He was competing in the second ever Wimbledon tournament when, at the start of a point, he threw the ball above his head and traced his racquet in a line from sky to court.
In the years to follow, other players would begin to use the overhand serve; a smash, not a lob, would signal the start of play in competitive matches; the height of the tennis net would gradually descend from five feet to three and a half, allowing balls to enter the court at increasingly acute angles.
Now, the overhand serve is tennis's most venerable image. The covers of multiple documentaries of big-name players—Djokovic, Osaka, McEnroe, Becker—reproduce the image from different angles. The pro looks toward the heavens, one arm reaching for a small floating object. These covers freeze the overhand in the apex of its trajectory, when serving is not about the earthly bounce of ball on court so much as transcendent effort.
The pro looks toward the heavens, one arm reaching for a small floating object.
In the McEnroe documentary, an archival-footage montage of McEnroe's serve dissolves into an animated stick-figure re-creation. "As soon as the movement begins, an astonishing rotation of the arm and forearm turns the racket through more than 180 degrees on its longitudinal axis," the voiceover says. "The undulation travels like a whipcrack until the ball is hit." The animation is a how-to manual for dominance on the court.
Since Myers's debut of the overhand serve, it has been a continually improving weapon. Americans in particular have contributed to its manufacture, introducing techniques from baseball to optimize the throwing motion. The popularization of hard courts in California made balls bounce quicker and, therefore, made serves more influential in deciding a point. Weightlifting and strength training allowed players to up their service speed, and successful players' BMIs have only continued to rise over time. The overhand infatuation places a clear value sticker on muscular, physical supremacy.
Since Myers's debut of the overhand serve, it has been a continually improving weapon.
Maurice McLoughlin's arm in the early 20th century earned his serve the nickname of "the Cannonball," and him the "California Comet." Many of the sport's best servers tower above their peers: 6'11" Karlović, 6'0" Rybakina, 6'0" Sabalenka, 6'8" Isner, 6'3" Gonzales. A poetics of awe is used to describe a strong overhand. One article explains Serena Williams's famous serve as "fluid like water but powerful like a jackhammer," while an otherwise less-than-flattering New Yorker article praised Ben Shelton's serve as "a particular kind of tennis thrill, like fireworks, loud and spectacular."
A warier lexicon surrounds the overhand serve's sneakier counterpart. Underhand serves are "underhanded" and "crafty," per one New York Times headline; "cheeky," according to a CNN one; a "sleight of hand" associated with a "mischievous" player like Kyrgios or Bublik; or most damningly, "a very millennial shot," as Tsitsipas has put it. Professional players who have used the underhand serve—even if only once—often find the move watermarked onto their entire careers. The decision provoked a crowd's ire against Martina Hingis at the 1999 French Open, and Kostyuk's recent use of the underarm to close out her match against Blinkova spawned people on X calling her "unsportsmanlike," "a loser," and "💩💩💩."
Professional players who have used the underhand serve—even if only once—often find the move watermarked onto their entire careers.
These are absurd responses, of course, to a tactic that does not break any of the rules of professional tennis. Yet, an ace procured through an underhand serve cannot escape the shadow of illegitimacy and/or weakness.
Twenty-five years after his heartwarming upset against Ivan Lendl––then ranked number one––in the 1989 French Open, Michael Chang still had to defend his underhand ace as his only possible option in that moment. "I'm not the biggest guy out there," Chang said retrospectively. "There aren't hardly any Asians out there playing. I'm not a typical tennis player. I'm 17 years old. I'm 135 pounds. It just doesn't happen."
In my years of recreational play, I've found that the underhand stigma seeps into amateur matches as well. The dreaded moment, for me: the pivot from casual rallying to a scored game, the expectation that both players will be using overhand serves. Pleasure turns into attempts to recall the slippery and elusive continental grip, or a fatalistic acceptance that my reflexes will likely be too slow to return my opponent's serve. (I'm not a very good recreational tennis player.) What were once unpredictable rallies become games with trudging scores, 15-0, 30-0, 40-0, match.
There are many bureaucratic, forbidding aspects of tennis, and the overhand serve is the culmination of them. But while radar guns measure the serving velocity of professionals who were stuffed into tennis academies as children and force-fed celery juice, the same fixations don't have to apply in recreational play or fandom. The underhand serve offers a more even playing ground, an invitation for rallies untrimmed by ace-crazed players. It turns tennis, at least temporarily, into a collaboration.