Well, you folks who claim these big serve speeds that don't match your computer rating understand the skepticism, right?
I mean, if you really own a serve that is way above level that no returner can handle, I don't see how that happens. Like, if I had a serve like a 4.5 woman or 4.0 guy, how bad does the rest of my game need to be for me to be computer rated at 3.5 like I am? Pretty bad, I would think. I'd have to have 3.0 level strokes on a few other things, at least. That doesn't make sense to me. Like, I would have a BH I can't put in the court? I can't wrap my head around it.
Like, take the issue that started this thread. If my serve is excellent, how are returners targeting my partner at all? They should be missing or sending high, soft cheese to my partner. That's how it goes in mixed, when my male partner is serving to the opposing woman. If she can target me at net at will, my male partner's serve isn't that great.
I mean, I don't have the problem of returners targeting my partner and I routinely played 4.0 doubles and 8.0 mixed before moving (with a 4.0 woman) without hindering them by being 'down a half rating'. But I have more serve variety than OP is claiming to.
But ime, a big serve only helps so much if the ball gets put in play I have a couple hinderances I'm working on:
1. I'm not great at hitting the short ball I can either hit it with decent pace deep (my go to) but I error a decent amount and the ball is still returnable. Or I can tap it over but this leaves me in a 50-50 net scramble at best. – the solution I see with others at my level or better is to be able to hit a less pacey more angled topspin shot that is either a winner or opens up more of the court. I can hit this sometimes but not with any consistency, I need reps on the footwork.
2. A deep block return, if flat and sending my own pace back at me does not always get me the initiative it should if I don't get my feet around the ball. If I'm late to the second shot their return only has to be ok and we're back to neutral.
So for me, often, gaining advantage =/= keeping advantage. This also couples with a higher error margin on serving. At the peak of my league season I was down to 4 double faults max per set probably averaging between 2 and 3. Acceptably by my standards of risk - reward, but admittedly high and higher when I play less meaning that if I don't hold the initiative on the points with good serves the games can get away from me.
Tl;dr: it's not that other shots are below level, it's that at the 3.5 level we just don't put away advantages as well or consistently so it doesn't net as much in the grand scheme.
As to who is at fault in a doubles scenario, in part OP sounds like she needs to work on serve variety. Placing the same serve, no matter how aggressively, will get adjusted to over the course of the match. But if the netwoman likes to stand too far off the net bunt returns and short balls can tend to dip right at ones feet, so being flexible with positioning is probably something that should be considered.
