John Newcombe's Sneaky Return of Serve Forehand Tactic

John Newcombe, three-time Wimbledon singles champion and a member of the United States Davis Cup coaching circle, has a specific pattern for putting doubt into an opponent's mind on second serve. It is not really a stroke tip. It is a piece of theatre with a shot attached.

The pattern itself

The mechanic is simple: on second serve, stand in closer than usual, run around the backhand and hit a forehand return. Struck well, it takes the initiative away from a server who has already lost some margin by missing the first ball. What makes it work is not the return, though. It is everything that happens on the second serves where the return is not attempted.

The cat and mouse part

Newcombe's account of it runs like this. Having hit one aggressive run-around forehand return early in a match, the returner then makes small movements on every subsequent second serve. A shift of weight, a step in, a feint toward the backhand side. Nothing large enough for an umpire to treat as deliberate distraction, but visible to the server.

Then nothing happens. The returner does not run around for another twenty minutes. The feints continue and the return stays orthodox. And then, on a break point, the move comes for real.

His own example was a break point at 30–40 against a server who had watched the feints all match without seeing them acted on. The feint began, the returner ran around the second serve, and the server tried to ace him down the middle and double-faulted instead. The point was won without the return ever being struck.

Why the pressure transfers

The server is the one who has to decide, under pressure, whether this is the second serve where the returner commits. Serving away from the forehand means serving into a smaller target; serving into it means conceding the initiative. Both options are worse than the option available before the pattern existed. Newcombe's framing is that the returner is the cat and the server the mouse, and the useful part of that is the asymmetry: the returner risks nothing by feinting, while the server risks a double fault by responding.

Timing, and how to get it wrong

The move is spent once it is used. Committing too early, running around on an unimportant point in the first few games, announces the pattern before there is any score pressure to exploit, and hands the server the rest of the match to prepare a serve that beats it. The value is entirely in the delay.

The same logic limits how often it can be repeated. Two or three genuine attempts in a match keeps the threat live. More than that and the server simply learns to serve wide to the forehand and take the returner's court position away.

What it needs to be worth trying

A forehand return that can actually hurt a second serve is the precondition; without it the feint is empty and the server works that out quickly. Beyond that it needs a returner willing to lose a few points to establish the threat, and enough composure to hold the pattern back through several games without using it. It is a tactic for players who already have the stroke and are looking for a way to make it count more often.

The same logic on the other side of the net

A server facing this pattern has a symmetrical option, which is to remove the returner's court position rather than to out-guess them. Serving wide to the forehand takes away the run-around by making it the shot the returner was going to hit anyway, and a body serve removes the space needed to set up for it. Both are lower-risk responses than trying to read whether this is the serve on which the returner commits.

What does not work is serving more conservatively. A slower second serve gives the returner more time to execute exactly the shot the pattern is built around, and the feints become more effective rather than less.