Dementieva's serve

[RainerShuttle]

Right, I watched Dementieva/Safina last night and as well as Elena played in rallies, her serve continues to let her down. Although she cut down on her double faults in sets 2 & 3, a lot of her second serves were simply tossed in with no pace and a better player than Safina would simply have smacked them away for winners.

Now Dementieva's serve has been her Achilles heel for years now and it makes you wonder why she hasn't improved it as with a more reliable serve, she'd be a very difficult player to beat. Any thoughts?

[ILoveSilvia]

she used to have a better serve but it gave her alot of back problems so she change it to this!


I think its better for her to play with this serve than not to play at all!

[Laury]

Maybe the only way she can lose a Grand Slam final to a player like kusnetzova is this: serving like the hell.

[Bruce]

I´m not sure if it is an injure problem, I think it´s a technical problem.
But she should stop playing and recover her body now or she can be in trouble. We know many players who needed to stop 6 months or even more because they did not stop when they had to, like Safin, Canas, Williams, Coria and others.

[Orion]

I would argue that Dementieva shouldn't work on the speed of her serve, but the spin. If she goes for a kicker serve, that coupled with her awesome drop-shots, would make her improve tenfold. The kicker also tends to stay in the court more often. She should just forget about trying to match the Williams speed on serve, and go for style instead.

[Catriel]

I agree with Orion.