The body serve is the most wasted shot in tennis

Everyone practises the wide one and the T. Almost nobody drills the serve that jams a returner into an unplayable answer.

Returners have gotten very good at the two serves you practise. Wide in the deuce court, down the T in the ad court, and their mirror images. Those are the corners, they're the ones that produce aces, and they're the ones every junior spends a bucket of balls chasing.

The problem with a corner serve is that it gives the returner space, and space is what a modern returner wants more than anything. Standing three metres behind the baseline with a big backswing, a good returner will happily run to a wide serve. He gets to swing freely at a ball moving away from him. That's a rally he's comfortable in.

Now serve at his right hip.

There's no good answer to a well-struck body serve, and the reason is mechanical rather than tactical. To hit either a forehand or a backhand you need lateral separation between the ball and your torso. Take that away and the returner has to solve the problem in the fraction of a second he has: step back and shorten the swing, or roll the wrist over and block it. Both produce a short, slow ball. That's the point. The body serve isn't hunting an ace, it's manufacturing a weak reply and a plus-one forehand into the open court.

It works especially well on second serves, where you'd normally kick it high to the backhand and accept a neutral rally. A kicker into the hip climbs into the returner's chest with no room to back away, and against a one-handed backhand it's genuinely brutal.

Why doesn't anyone drill it? Because it feels like a miss. A body serve looks like a serve you meant to hit wide and pulled. There's no satisfying sound, no ace, no scoreboard credit, and in practice it's tempting to write it off as a bad rep. So players hit corners, get broken by returners who love corners, and conclude they need a bigger first serve.

One caveat worth respecting. The body serve punishes returners who stand deep and swing big. Against a chipper who stands on the baseline and blocks everything back short, jamming him does less, and you're better off going wide to open the court. Read the return position before you pick the pattern.

But if you play the same opponent every week and can't break their return rhythm, stop aiming at lines. Aim at the hip.