PARIS — Raffaella Reggi rose to 13th in the world in women’s tennis in the late 1980s despite a serve so balky she once recorded 28 double faults in a match in Rome. With the shrill voices of fans pleading with her to use an underhand motion still ringing in her ears, Reggi said she walked into the press room afterward and professed, “I have no idea how to serve.”

Watching a player repeatedly start points by hitting balls into the net or, in the German Alexander Zverev’s case, beyond the baseline, can be excruciating.

“I had some flashbacks,” Reggi said of Zverev’s double-fault-filled performance in his United States Open final defeat to Dominic Thiem.

It’s akin to actors forgetting their lines during a soliloquy. You sit there, helpless to assist, willing them to get back in the flow. If all the court’s a stage, double faults are a tennis player’s inner heckler lashing out.

Source: New York Times

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