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To Jump Top Spin Serve or Not to Jump Top Spin Serve
Jump Top Spin Serve
The reason why we jump top spin serve (henceforth to be referred to as “jump serve”) is that it can be hit with tremendous power, making it difficult for passers to react and pass. The higher contact point, as opposed to standing top spin serve, also creates more difficult angles for opposing passers to deal with. This type of serve can be highly effective but only if executed well, as many service errors can occur from this. This is the risk teams and players have to balance whether to jump serve or not.
In my first season with IBB Polonia London, I felt that too much service errors occurred when jump serving that it was hindering the team. I built a DataVolley worksheet to find out if this was actually the case.
Jump Top Spin Servers versus Jump Float Servers
I wanted to look, at a general sense, all jump serve attempts versus all jump float serve attempts (henceforth to be referred to as “float serve”) that I’ve statted in the Men’s Super League, 2018-19 season.
When comparing all serves, I found that float serves was better on all performance indicators measured, except for Service Ace %. So the overall quality, or service rating, was better for the float serve (1.87 vs 1.70). You will get nearly as many aces with the float serve as with the jump serve (6.6% vs 10.8%) but the benefit is wiped out into the negative when 27.3% of jump serves results in an error, as compared to only 12.7% of float serves.
I’ve heard the argument that jump serves will get you more service errors but you accept the risk to put the opposing teams in more poor passing situations, which will make it hard for the passing team to get the kill. Otherwise, they’ll score anyway with an easier serve. The stats show this is not the case as you get a higher positive serve, i.e. putting the passing team in poor situations, for the float serve (35.0%) compared to the jump serve (31.6%).
Players who have Both Jump and Float Served
You can’t make any informed decisions to jump or float serve with players who only exclusively float serve, simply because they don’t jump serve. Because of this, I wanted to exclude those players and just look at players with at least 1 jump serve attempt to see if there’s any differences.
You can see that the 41 players who have jump served at least once, are actually better float servers compared to all 120 players statted together. This means the effect seen above is even more pronounced. Float serves have even better overall quality compared to jump serves (1.92 vs .170), almost gets any many aces (7.7% vs 10.8%), much less errors (12.6% vs 27.3%) and puts teams in more poor passing situations (36.4% vs 31.6%).
Individual Players
This is big picture stuff that float serves are generally better than jumps serves. However, it really depends on the individual players and how technically efficient they are at the jump serves. Some players may actually be better jump servers than float servers. So I’ve looked into players who have served both type but has a minimum of 15 service attempts for both types of serve. This is so we have a somewhat decent idea of the performance level for each serve type.
Only 7 players have reached the minimum standard of 15 service attempts for both types of serve. You can see that those players still serve better with the float compared to the jump serve. The improvement ranges from 0.19 to 0.43 in quality. So while some players have very good jump serving stats, they actually serve better with the float serve.
To Jump Top Spin Serve or Not to Jump Spin Serve
The stats show that the float serve, as compared to the jump serve, the serve quality is higher, you almost get as many aces, you’ll make a lot less service errors and you will put the team in bad situations a lot more. This effect is more pronounced when considering jump servers only. Even on an individual player level, this would still be the case. All of this would indicate that it is best to go all jump float serves. However, I wouldn’t abandon jump top spin serves altogether. Jump serving will give the passing team different looks so we can disrupt the rhythm of the passing team. So a nice compromise is to mix it up and do both types of serve and see which is doing well in the match. However, I would only apply this to players with good jump serving stats. For players with poor jump serving stats, e.g. 50% service error pct, I would kindly say to exclusively float serve because they are hindering the team too much with much benefit.
Service Statistics Definitions
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