Step-by-step: Tennis serves with Jean Baptiste-Badon
When this step-by-step series started, one of the first things that came to mind was serving a tennis ball. As an avid tennis fan, I’ve always enjoyed watching the different serve rituals of tennis players. The most notable in my mind is that of 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal.
The King of Clay had a very particular service routine, adjusting his clothing and tucking his hair behind his ears and headband before tormenting his opponents.
In our latest step-by-step, Utah State Men’s Tennis player Jean-Baptiste Badon was gracious enough to teach me his service ritual, one that has propelled him to a strong start to the season at the top singles position for the Aggies.
Badon, as every tennis player I’ve met or played with, has a service routine that he follows each time he steps up to the service line.
When he gets to the line in the ad court, he first angles his foot towards the outside net post to get his alignment correct. He then will count to five, usually in the form of bouncing the ball five times, before looking over the net and to his opponent.
“Even though I might bounce the ball maybe 10 times, if I don’t count to five, I’m not ready to serve,” Badon said.
After that, he takes a deep breath, looks across at his target and starts his serve windup.
In his serve windup, he holds the ball in the middle triangle of his racquet, tosses the ball into the air and launches up into the ball. This is frequently accompanied by a verbal counting to three, one count for each of those motions.
“I don’t count out loud too often, but sometimes when I’m nervous, I will literally say ‘one, two, three,’” Badon said.
This routine does not change whether he is serving up the T, out wide, first serve or second serve.
“You want to try and do the same thing as much as you can,” Badon said. “No real changes, especially with the toss.”
The toss is something Badon emphasized several times, including on several occasions when I took over, set on imitating his service ritual. The toss, after bouncing the ball five times, needs to go straight up with no side-to-side motion.
After watching Badon serve a couple of times, I took over at the service line.
It took a couple of serves going into the net and out long with some intermittent instruction, but I was able to land a serve solidly in play.
Admittedly, I am not a true tennis beginner, with two years of high school tennis under my belt. However, those two years of junior varsity play still have me far from an expert.
Having already conquered the serve, it was time to venture across the net to try and return the serve of the first singles server.
Watching plenty of tennis every summer on TV, one of the things that impresses me the most is the service speed from top-end tennis players. While this was prominently in my mind, standing well beyond the baseline, I was still surprised by how quickly the serve got to me, and it was fairly evident Badon was taking it easy.
Though it took a couple of tries and an errant backhand over the fence, Badon gave me a forehand serve I was able to get back over the net.
That would be all, however, as he proceeded to blow every other serve either right past me or in a location I couldn’t get a racquet squarely on.
While Badon still sufficiently humbled the tennis fan in me, I’m chalking it up as a win for my successful serve and one returned serve.