Andy Roddick has highlighted one area in the game of Carlos Alcaraz that still needs improvement after his Australian Open exit.
The big serving American has suggested that Alcaraz’s serve is one aspect of his game that has not seen much improvement in the past two years and identified that it the “most obvious place to improve”.
The World No. 2 was handed a surprisingly tough 4-set loss by Alexander Zverev in the quarters of the 2024 Australian Open and was broken 7-times during the match.
Alcaraz sits 9th in the overall ATP serve stats for the past 52 weeks but maintains the lowest average aces per match (4.1) among the top 41 ranked servers.
The 2023 Wimbledon Champion also holds the lowest percentage of first serve points won (72.5%) among the top 24 players on the serving charts.
Appearing on the first episode of the Served with Andy Roddick podcast, the 2003 US Open Champion, reviewed the 2024 Australian Open with journalist John Wertheim and provided some useful attention to detail on Alcaraz’s serve.
“I don’t think it’s gonna be super smooth sailing, I think the tournaments that are coming up, obviously Indian Wells is a great surface for him because the ball jumps up and away, that’s gonna give him some love on the kick serve.
“I think his serve leaves a lot to be desired. That is the one thing that I don’t think has really improved much at all in the last two years. I remember watching him, kinda his breakout – we knew about him – but winning Miami a couple of years ago and he was serving 135, and now I feel like he’s serving 127,” said the former World No. 1.
He continued: “There’s not a lot of motion to it, right? There are big servers, who serve straight through the court. And so, they’re are the type of servers that serve 136, but if you get a racket on it, you can square it up a little bit.
“And then there’s like the Roger [Federer] type servers that can serve 118 and the ball’s sliding against your racket and it just feels a little bit squirrely – so where you’re kind of hitting foul balls off the serve.
“Alcaraz, if he’s not hitting that kick serve – that’s getting you up and away and out of the zone – it feels like people are able to firm up his first serve when he goes after it. You need to create a little motion on that serve, he needs to create a little it of tail.
“Especially with how good he is on that first ball and how much he can bully you. Right now, even his slice serve feels like it kind of goes straight. It doesn’t have that like ]Pete] Sampras swing on it where it’s tailing away from you and you’re kind of having to chase it.
“It’s like, if you read it right, you can kind of square it up and get that good pop sound to it. So I think the serve is the most obvious place to improve with Alcaraz.”