Underarm Servers at the Miami Open… And Beyond

By Randy Walker

@TennisPublisher

Corentin Moutet is so sneaky about his underarm serves that he wouldn’t even tell a media representative when he hit them in his first round match at the 2025 Miami Open.

Moutet, the crafty and entertaining Frenchman, was one of three of the most prolific servers….er… underarm servers…in tennis today who were on the schedule of play on the first Wednesday of this Masters 1000-level tennis extravaganza at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium. You could probably argue that Moutet, Alexander Bublik and Nick Kyrgios are probably the best underarm servers in tennis history.

After watching the first-round win over Argentina’s Sebastian Baez for Bublik, who admittedly said that he serves underhand from time to time almost purely for fun, I could only catch the first set between Moutet, perhaps the best of the underarm servers, and Alexander Blockx of Belgium before I had to retreat to the Miami Open interview room to be ready to speak to the Aussie Kyrgios, who I labeled “The Godfather of the Underarm Serve,” after his emotional win over American Mackie McDonald.

“I didn’t get a chance to see the second set. Do you hit any underhand serves today or no?” I asked Moutet in a private Mixed Zone interview room along with two other reporters from France.

“Next time you will see, you’ll watch,” Moutet responded.

“But did you do it today or no?”

“I don’t know,” the clever Moutet retorted.

Underarm serves have been one of my mantras for the last few years, as not only am I riveted by them, but have a solid reputation for also hitting them in fun and official matches. I’ve experimented, studied and spoken to many people in tennis about the underarm serve so much so that I’m finishing up a book on the underarm serve, tentatively titled “Under-handed or Under-rated: Tactics and A History of the Underarm Serve in Tennis.” Speaking directly to Bublik, Kyrgios and Moutet about underhand serves all in one day at the Miami Open was certainly an ace…. an underarm ace that is.

“This is a type of the shot that you can use when you want to enjoy a bit, when you want to entertain the crowd. So it’s not to win, it’s just to enjoy,” said Bublik, from Kazakhstan, after his win over Baez.

“It’s a tactic for me,” said Moutet, after not revealing to me if he hit an underarm serve in his second set in my absence. “So I’m using it when I can as a drop shot or for whatever. So for me, there’s nothing disrespectful or anything against the player. For me, it’s just like a way to win the point. So if I can win the point like this, I will do it more.”

Said Kyrgios, “I think it adds a different aspect to the game and people are yelling for underarm serves. Look, you never see Roger (Federer) or Rafa (Nadal) or Novak (Djokovic) doing it, but I think people with personality just, it’s not that bad, I think. There’s worse things in the world.”

Funny enough, on the day when these three masters of the underarm serve all played, not one hit an underarm serve, at least we are guessing Moutet didn’t actually hit one in the second set of his match. However, about 130 miles to the north, as Moutet was playing his first set, a Canadian amateur player named Allan Bentley was in the middle Florida coastal town of Vero Beach and using the underarm serve extensively in an inter-club team match.

Bentley is on my club team for The Boulevard Tennis & Padel Club in Vero Beach and has been troubled with a bad shoulder that has prevented him from using a traditional overhead serve effectively for a few weeks. Because he often plays with and against me, he is well-versed in the underarm serve as I tend to use it at least once in every outing where we play. In a practice set on a Saturday morning 10 days ago, Bentley was my opponent and I had to be on the returning end of his underarm serves, which were decently effective and tricky to return with a highly-sliced and spun delivery. As captain of the club team, I refused to take no for an answer when Bentley said he didn’t want to play the upcoming match against the team from Sebastian, Florida because of his shoulder and only being able to serve underhand. I knew he could at least compete well if he hit the same highly-spun underhand serves that he hit pretty effectively against me.

As Moutet was wrapping up his first set against Blockx, I got the text from teammate David Coutts with the results of the Boulevard Club’s team match – Bentley and partner Ray McNulty won their match playing in the No. 1 doubles position 6-2, 6-3. Bentley served underhand for all but one serve in the entire match.

“I need details on Ray and Allan’s big match,” I texted back to the group text to all the team members.

“Yeah,” texted Bentley. “For your book.”