How to serve: backhand or forehand?

How you serve in a padel match can make a difference between winning and losing. If you have a predictable serve, your opponent will quickly work it out and know what to do to nullify the threat. But if you make your serve unpredictable, you’ll be able to move you opponent around the court, give them less time to think of their strategy, and get on top in rallies.

In this post, with help of adidas padel coach, Jaime Rey, we look at some key factors to work on when serving. Let’s take a look.

The different aspects to take into account when we serve.

When making the serve in padel to one direction or another, we have to take into account a number of factors to make the best decision.

• To be unpredictable: We have to vary the direction of our serve, otherwise the opponent will read the serve better and will be able to make a good rest.
• Speed: We must take into account that if we serve very fast we will have less time to get to the net, so we must adjust the speed of the stroke to reach the net in good conditions.
• Serve with or without Australian formation: The Australian formation is a position taken up at the beginning of the point where both players of the team with service are on the same side of the court, leaving the other side of the court empty. If we choose to serve in this formation, we must be careful when we serve from the side where my partner plays, because there is more distance to cover to get to the other side of the court or to the net.
• The opponent: We must make a small analysis of our opponent in terms of his weaknesses and strengths when it comes to subtracting, to serve where it is more difficult for them.
• First or second serve: We must take into account that, if we make a second serve, it usually goes at a slower speed, so we must play where it is more difficult for the opponent to deal with.

Answering the question of the title of the post, there is no better or worse direction, what we have to do is to analyse the factors that we have discussed above to serve to one side or another.

We also have to take into account that serving backhand, which often makes it more difficult than if we serve to the forehand, we should serve closer towards our opponent’s body.

With this direction we force the opponent to move either to the forehand or backhand and we give them less time to make a good hit.

Finally, we must remember that one of the main objectives of the serve when we are starting to play is to put the ball in play, you do not want to try to make direct points as it often leads us to commit double faults.

The key objective of the serve should be to move the opponent from their comfort zone, to create an advantageous space to play the next ball.

Now you know the best tips and factors to consider when playing a serve, it’s time to get on court with your padel racket and practice and improve. Keep an eye out on the All For Padel blog for more advice from our coaches on how to improve your game.