The American No.1 men’s tennis player Taylor Fritz has garnered immense attention after his performance in the US Open 2024. Veteran French coach Patrick Mouratoglou could also not keep his eyes off Fritz as he hailed his serve recently and explained how he wishes to see more of it in the future.
Mouratoglou, who has also trained American legend Serena Williams in the past, shared how he was fascinated by Fritz’s ‘pancake’ serve. He took to Instagram to talk about the serve’s technicalities and its specialities as well.
“You can slice the ball, you can hit the flat and the pancake serve, you are hitting the ball with the head of the racket going this way (demonstrates the shot). So that’s a very unusual shot,” said Mouratoglou while beginning the video.
“When you slice as a righty, you slice on the deuce side. If you want to slice on the ad side, you can’t. You can only hit flat.
“If you hit the ball like this (showed by moving the racket in a particular way), you kind of slice it the other way as if you are a lefty. So the great thing is you have the curve and the ball goes even more out.”
The French coach further added that the shot is still not known to many players. He also explained his displeasure at how the players don’t really show keen interest in developing it. He concluded by deciding that the pancake serve should be taught by him in his academy.
Wanting to watch more of the shot in the upcoming future, Mouratoglou wrote in his caption:
“There’s one serve that I want to see more of in the modern game: the pancake serve. Taylor Fritz knows how to do it.”
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Fritz has been seen performing this serve on various occasions and it has mostly yielded him positive results only. With Mouratoglou now putting up the request for players to use this serve more, it won’t be a surprise if we get to see more players playing it in the future.
Meanwhile, Mouratoglou is growing from strength to strength with his academy as he opened two new branches recently in the United States, one in Florida and the other in Atlanta. On the other hand, Fritz’s next assignment is set to be the Laver Cup 2024 in Berlin where he is set to star for Team World.
