With a point on his serve to secure an impressive win against a dangerous opponent, Portuguese tennis player Nuno Borges produced a clever play to get the job done.
When it was over, that opponent, Tomás Martín Etcheverry, was not happy. As Etcheverry looked away from Borges as they shook hands at the net, some of the Barcelona Open crowd present booed the winner, who was celebrating a 6-3, 7-6(4) victory against a player who took a set off Carlos Alcaraz at last week’s Monte Carlo Masters.
Borges’ crime? Serving underarm to win the final point with an ace that took Etcheverry by surprise, leaving him floundering as he tried to hunt the ball down.
The fans taking exception to Borges’ tactic is a reminder that the underarm serve remains one of tennis’ most controversial shots — for reasons that feel increasingly out of date.
Borges, who was struggling physically with cramp and, he told Portuguese journalist José Morgado, an issue with one of his legs, may not have wanted or been able to kick off on it when serving. But there is no excuse required to produce an underarm serve.
Such is the power in the men’s game on serve that myriad opponents stand a long way behind the baseline. The underarm serve is the perfect surprise tactic, especially for a player with a big serve, like Alexander Bublik, who is a master of the art. It sows seeds of doubt in opponents’ minds. And in Borges’ case, it is perfect for a player who cannot serve at full power in the conventional way.
To criticise it is like telling Alcaraz off for producing a drop shot when his opponent was expecting a bulleted forehand into the corner. The element of surprise is the whole point.
Having previously been dismissed as a shot reserved for amateur players who couldn’t serve properly, underarm serves came into fashion towards the end of the 2010s, partly because of how far back players like Rafael Nadal were standing to return — especially on clay. Daniil Medvedev took it to such extremes with his returning position that players started practising underarm serves before playing him.
France’s Alexandre Müller, who used the tactic against Medvedev at Wimbledon a couple of years ago, said during an interview: “I tried it twice because he was standing so far back. The first time in my life I’m doing this. So I made it twice and I won both points. I practised on the court yesterday.
“Against Daniil, you have to make some serve and volley, and if you can underarm serve, it can be a good choice. If you serve flat, he has too much time to read your serve and it’s very difficult.”
So far, so logical.
Others, such as Bublik and Nick Kyrgios, have the benefit of forcing pretty much every opponent they face to take a deeper returning position because they possess a cannon of a serve. They also possess the dexterity to produce well-placed, well-disguised underarm serves, exploiting the position their power has earned them.
Just over a month after producing six in one game against Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard at the Lyon Open, Bublik said in an interview at Wimbledon last year that “it’s just to mix it up, spice things up.
“It shouldn’t be a big deal — it’s just a stupid shot that gives another player an advantage. The chance you will hit it perfectly is like one or two in 10 and (if you don’t) you give the opponent an easy shot. But somehow no one is ready, so it’s tough. It’s just another shot. We’re not talking about drop shots, but we’re all talking about underarm serves.”
As a regular purveyor of the shot, maybe it’s natural that Bublik would defend it. So how about those on the receiving end? Draper faced a couple from the mercurial Mattia Bellucci at the French Open last year, and said in a news conference: “I never understand with underarm serves why people boo and stuff, because it’s part of the game. If you’ve got that shot in the locker, so many guys are returning from so far back in the court that it’s a good play. It worked on that point against me today, and I have seen him pull out that one before.”
Medvedev, who receives them rather than uses them, added in a news conference at Wimbledon in 2024: “I used it sometimes myself. I think it’s a fair tactic.”
His issue was more about its effectiveness. “I do think it’s a tactic that has its limits, and that’s why no one is using it too much. To surprise one, two times, yes. If you do the third time, it’s going to be, I feel, tough for you to win the point.”
There are definitely limits to how effective it can be — though Corentin Moutet’s nine points won from 12 attempts in a French Open match against Sebastian Ofner two years ago suggests there is a fairly high ceiling — but any concerns over the shot’s morality are ludicrous.
One man who has experience of winning a match with one, as Borges did on Wednesday, is tennis’ one-time trickshot king Pablo Cuevas. In an interview a couple of years ago about his favorite shots from his career, he volunteered a second serve he hit on match point to win the Brazil Open final in São Paulo against Albert Ramos-Viñolas in 2017.
In Cuevas’ case, the shot came from desperation: He did not want to hit a 13th double fault. Desperation, this time of the physical kind, was what forced Michael Chang to hit probably the most famous example of the underarm serve during a stunning upset win over Ivan Lendl as a 17-year-old at the 1989 French Open.
“I didn’t do it much,” Cuevas said.
“But if someone did it to me, I wouldn’t take it badly because I understand that there are players who start very far back, and you try to make things a bit difficult for your opponent. I don’t think that’s cheating — far from it. I think it’s a tactical thing and it all depends a bit on how it’s used, but in general I see it as something that’s good to take the opponent out of their comfort zone.”
Underarm serving is less common on the WTA side, where players tend not to stand so far back to receive. As with Cuevas, doing so tends more to come from necessity — as has been the case with Sara Errani ever since she developed a case of the serving yips in 2019.
And for those booing Borges or having an issue with his use of the underarm serve against Etcheverry, Errani has a perfect rejoinder, from an Instagram post she wrote to her perceived haters seven years ago: “Not liking my serve? Write to WTA or Santa. I am tired!”
There is fatigue, too, for those still having to make the argument that underarm serves are anything but underhand. As with the righteous indignation around apologizing for net cords, tennis needs to get a grip.