Stefanos Tsitsipas changed his serve motion to combat some injury problems, but he's since returned to his old serve, and he explained why at the 2024 Italian Open.
The Greek player has always had a really strong serve, which was a major weapon for him. It carried him to his only ATP Finals trophy and certainly carried him through many tough moments on the tennis courts.
It's an essential part of his game, and having it be as good as possible is vital. Unfortunately, because of it, he started to deal with some physical issues and slowly started to change it to relieve the problems he was starting to experience.
The change of serve didn't hurt him. He didn't lose his serve; quite the contrary, it looked good for a while, but since then, he has decided to return to his old serve again.
"I tried it. I see a lot of players have switched to that, so I decided to give it a go to try it, to see how it responds. A lot of players have actually improved to getting to a pinpoint position. One of them is Jannik Sinner."
"You could see it over the years, the evolution of his serve and how much he increased precision and power, easier power. This is why also I try to follow that direction. It worked out pretty well in the beginning. I started getting a good rhythm to it and felt like it could belong to me, that change could be something positive."
The change lasted for six weeks, after which his serve started to decline slowly, as he struggled to find places for improvement. He didn't quite hit it as consistently, and issues persisted, which is why he went back to his old serve.
"I tried it for about six weeks. What I noticed and what I saw in my serve, it started - is that the right term, 'degrading'? - wasn't as consistent anymore. I couldn't fix certain things. I had an issue with a few things such as depth."
It's where he feels most comfortable, and he didn't change it because he wanted to. He changed to alleviate some physical problems, but they're not there anymore, so there is no need to really avoid the service he grew up with.
"Regardless of what I tried, I couldn't fix it, so I returned to my old serve. I did something strange, which I've never done before in a match, I was trying different things during the match, which is definitely something I don't recommend to anyone doing because it can really throw you off mentally."
"I took my final decision and went back to my old serve. It has served me well over the years. My back doesn't hurt anymore, which is important."
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