Stand further back on the return and stop apologising

The fashion for taking the return early has produced a lot of blocked balls and not much pressure on anybody serving well.

There is a coaching orthodoxy that says take time away. Step in, stand on the baseline, meet the serve early, rush the man opposite. It sounds aggressive. Against a serve travelling at a genuinely uncomfortable speed it very often is not.

Standing close does take time from the server. It also takes time from you, and you are the one who has to solve a ball you did not choose. What comes out is a block. A short swing, a flat face, minimal margin, and a return that lands around the service line at moderate pace, which is a gift to a server stepping forward into the court.

Move back a metre and the ball has to travel further before you touch it, which means it has slowed and dropped. Now a full swing is available. A full swing means depth, and depth on the return is the single most underrated thing in the sport, because a deep return forces the server to hit his first groundstroke from behind the baseline, which cancels the whole advantage of having served.

The cost is real and I will not pretend otherwise. Deeper positions expose you to angles. A wide serve on the ad court pulls a player standing three metres back a long way off the court, and the recovery run is punishing. That is a genuine trade, and it is why the right answer is not a fixed position at all but a position chosen per serve, per opponent, per side.

What irritates me is that the choice is rarely made. Players pick a return position in the warm-up and stay there for two hours while the server solves them. Then they lose in straight sets and talk about not converting break points.

Second serves are where this gets silly. A returner who is deep on the first serve and does not move in three metres for the second is throwing away the best opportunity in the game. The second serve is slower, higher and shorter. It is the one ball you were promised.

Pick a spot for the first serve based on how much time you need. Pick a spot for the second based on how much damage you can do. Two decisions, taken separately. Most players take neither.