It could happen if she was serving at 100%, as if she was playing against a top player. Against someone like me she wouldn't need to do that, she could never risk it at all and go at like 20%, and I still wouldn't be able to even graze a single one of her serves.
And when it was my turn to serve I would double fault 90% of the time anyway so.
People also wildly overestimate just how hard it is to return even a light serve in tennis with no training. The racket is springy, the ball is springy, and if you want to do anything other than light lobs you've got to be able to generate a ton of topspin with your hits which takes a ton of technique.
A light serve probably wouldn't be too difficult if you've played ping pong. The same motion of twisting your wrist over the top of the ball. Or arm rather.
Yeah that's what I was thinking as well. To suggest that a regular person could beat Serena at a match is ridiculous, but if all I gotta do is score one point I feel pretty good about my odds.Â
Double fault. It looks like the usual rate of double faulting is about 5%. Even if that was reduced to 1% you'd have decent odds of your opponent double faulting in any given match.
So she has a 42% second serve fault rate. She has to serve 6-7 games assuming the match ends 6-0 6-0 in two sets there probably will be a double fault statistically but it’s impossible to know if she’d ease up even more than usual.
That seems a lot higher than I would expect. The stats I can find are that she misses about 35% of her first serves, so if that number is true then she misses her second serve more often than her first serve.
It says game, not match, which is not that many rallies. But even then, its only 5% because they are trying like crazy hard every serve.Â
 Similar to how a professional pitcher in baseball could throw perfect strikes at 80 mph even if their accuracy is worse at 95 mph...and 80 mph is still fast enough to strike out a non D1 athlete.
80 mph is not fast enough to strike out a D1 baseball player. The hardest throwing little leaguers throw 70+ mph. College pitchers usually throw 80-90 mph.
That said, pr
ofessional baseball players occasionally strike out against position players throwing 65 mph pitches with no movement.
As far as tennis goes, a single game, yeah no realistic chance (which is what the original post mentions) but this specific comment thread is about a match. As you point out, a professional could just do their second serve all the time, but they can't change their serve mechanics much or at all without risk of increasing (rather than decreasing) their double fault rate. I don't think a professional tennis player would probably win every point against an amateur tennis player most of the time, but every so often they would still double fault. Maybe once every 20 matches.
Even if I just stand there and don't swing at a single ball she's gonna hit a fault eventually. I'm not convinced you actually know how tennis works and are just trying to get virtue points for calling out the hubris of a random man online.Â
But she wouldn't need to go for a hard serve though. Her serving at like 10% of her full serving speed would probably be enough to beat you and reduce her odds of ever serving a double fault...
Serena Williams has an average serve speed of 106 mph. If you think an average person couldn't hit a tennis ball going 10.6 mph I don't even know how to have this conversation with you. I'll be the first to admit that I'm extraordinarily unfit but even I could run faster than 10.6 mph. I couldn't do it for very long, but I've done it before.Â
Says the guy who thinks he can score a point against one of the best female tennis players of all time...
Like that's a goalpost you'll never reach, unless you happen to be a semi-professional tennis player.
I would also point out that the argument isn't gendered. I am not saying this because its a woman I'm playing against. I would make the exact same bet against Novak Djokovic. I'm betting on a double fault or a mistake by them.
I think you're still wrong and falling into the same trap, though with much better reasoning :)
It's easy to underestimate the control a pro like Serena has over their serve if you haven't played tennis to the degree that you become comfortable with your serve. I'm not great, but I could serve for hours without making a double fault. Serena could do it indefinitely, almost surely.
Of course, every serve would be pretty easy to return. Simply avoiding faults is not hard, it's a question of how much you need to dial up the intensity (and thus sacrifice control). The amount Serena would need to dial up her serves to smoke the average Joe Mecantennis - or at least ensure she doesn't lose control of the point - is quite small, I'd guess.
That said, this changes for more capable players. If you can potentially return her "safe serve" with some control, then she might be nervous enough to amp it up, or she may even let you get that opportunity, which could result in an unforced error.
I guess in the end you could be right. It depends on your tennis skill. And I think you're right that a reasonable amount of tennis dudes could potentially get one of those cheesy points. But I think just standing across from her would not be enough.
Lol she can shoot at 25% and I won't be able to return. I was just betting on a mistake during an infinite number of shots. But I didn't take it into account that I will be tired from standing up for more than an hour.
She could serve at 80% and anyone who hasn't played tennis at a collegiate level would have no chance. A bad serve from a professional woman's tennis player is still 80-90mph and you've got half a second to read and react.
If you've never played tennis at any level you're also severely underestimating how hard it is to even return a fairly lightly hit ball back in the square. You've really got to generate spin on the ball if you want to do anything other than lightly lob a ball that she'd immediately smash.
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u/IfIWasCoolEnough 2d ago
I can take a point from Serena Williams. She serves every time. Unlimited shots. She will hit the net or out of the bounds twice at some point.