In my last post I talked about the fundamentals of a good serve. A central theme was that your serve should be as effective as possible (and can, in fact, be pretty effective) without taking on the risk of a service fault. Why? One fault and your opponent is almost 10% closer to winning the game. But it shouldn’t be that way. You really should get two serves. By only having one serve and penalizing the fault with a lost point, squash is less exciting, deprived of creativity, and the most commonly hit shot in the game becomes too often a formality.
The serve starts the game. There is something very unsatisfying about an uninteresting start to the play. Tennis has booming first serves. Football (American, that is) has a kickoff. Track races start with a gunshot. Pool starts with the break. Baseball starts with a 90 mile-an-hour pitch. The audiences’ attention is rapt right from the start. But not so with squash. The serve generally looks like a basic cross-court and it generally takes a few shots before the point gets going, and by that time it is usually just other squash players that can appreciate the subtleties of the action.
The first time I played with the softball there was a very strange rule. You got two serves but if the first was a fault (within the court) the receiver could elect to play the ball. I never understood the inspiration for this nuance to the fault rule. The one time I remember having this situation I was the server who had faulted and my opponent hit my “short” service into the tin. We both agreed it was a strange rule.
But having two services was a good thing. Players would take chances with their first serve, often launching a high lob and trying to catch the sidewall high just below the “out” line. Even if one were to double-fault, which rarely happened, you only lost the serve, not the point. The risk to an ambitious first serve was negligible, and players actually practiced their serves and had an array of options. Besides the lob and “line drive” serve, there were font-wall/same-side-wall “Philadelphia” serves, front-wall/opposite-side-wall serves right at the player’s body, and serves down the middle. Players would use top spin and sometimes even serve short serves just to throw off their opponent. And if this serve went out, they would revert to their safe second serve. Serving was more interesting and innovative, and audiences would enjoy seeing how the point would start. But now? Serve it out, lose the point. It’s just not worth the risk.
Having just one serve is unfortunate for players and audiences alike. Combined with PAR scoring (which I do like – I’ll explain why another day) serving has become the least interesting part of the game. So I still stick by everything I wrote in my last post, but wish the rule was different. I would much more happily write a post about all of the interesting first serves you should hit.
