It's hard to say, 'cause there was no doubt that in his hey day Krajicek was considered in Goran, Sampras, Stich, Becker, Rosset, Forget, etc. class of big servers. They were all big servers, haha; and basically if all were on, they were 99.9% effective. So it's not like it really made that much of a difference, seriously. There was nothing you could really do against any of these guys if their serves were on on any given day, so it's kind of a washout. After all, you can't really improve on perfection.
Put it this way, their serves were all "good enough." In other words, it was the REST of their game that determined their results on any given day.
But for strictly hypothetical comparisons, since I don't honestly felt it made much difference in actual real results; I'd say Goran had the better out wide serve. Obviously, being a lefty and the way his motion was constructed (I've used it and it's MADE for swinging the serve out wide), he got more wide serve aces than anyone. If you really want to ace someone A LOT, going out WAY wide with pace and being a lefty is the ticket.
So in that respect, Goran was better. In terms of darting one up the T with precision? I havn't seen many if any who did that as well as Krajicek. His motion just seemed perfectly aligned to go up the T, and he did so with AMAZING precision and speed. His low service toss especially seemed to aid in the effect. It was basically like a gun, such a compact motion and toss and then bam right down the T for the ace. The equivalent on the forehand would be Berasategui, he had that same time of gun type effect going for him, where the motion was so compact, and then just bam in the blink of an eye and with the flick of a wrist he could just RAIL a winner past you...guys like Gonzales and Roddick have big forehands, but they also have MASSIVE wind ups, what made Berasategui's forehand so tough was not just the pace, but it was the split-second trigger effect that Krajicek had going for him on his serve.
Goran's down the T serve was good, but not unbelievable in my opinion, but what made up for it was that his out wide serve was so unreturnable. If he hit it well, there was really nothing you could do about it even if you were sitting on it, he simply just swung you out WAY too wide. Sampras by comparison could swing you out wide too, but not to the degree Goran could.
What made Sampras' serve good was it's balance...VERY good in all categories, but I wouldn't say the absolute BEST in any. For disguise, I'd say Stich and Goran had the hardest serves to read. For shear pace, there were always a few who could stretch the radar just a little more. For pure kick, there were specialists like Rafter and Edberg. For going out wide with the slice, nobody was in Goran's league. For darting it down the middle in the blink of an eye with an equally blink of an eye, stealth motion, the best was Krajicek, etc. But Sampras was the most balanced in all these categories, of pace, spin, placement, disguise, etc. That's why OVERALL, he's the best server ever; but on *any given day* there were potentially more dominating servers...like Krajicek and Goran and Stich and Rusedski and Roddick and Philipoussis, etc. Just my opinion.
Back to the matter at hand, on the second serve; it's a toss-up. Neither got particularly tremendous kick on their seconds, a limitation of their service motions really...i.e. Krajicek not enough knee bend, and for Goran he never really set/planted his feet too well to really push up on the ball for kick. Goran's second was more or less just a slower version of his first in my opinion, same with Krajicek. Sampras on the other hand had a TRUE second serve a la Becker, in that he had a motion that made kicking serves more natural.
But overall, I give the second serve edge to Krajicek, because he was more reliable second server and not as prone to key double faults like Goran who sometimes had really shaky nerves and went for boneheaded second serve aces a la Philipoussis with very little margin/kick (it's not like Sampras who had more natural margin on seconds to go for more, because his motion simply naturally produced more kick).
On a good day though, Goran's second was more dominating than Krajicek's because he went for more and was more of a risk taker.
On an off day he could be a double fault machine just as well as he could be an ace machine.
Krajicek's second serve, however, I always thought was pretty reliable and effective. Not the best, but certainly more effective than the vast majority due to his height and placement and still good pace.
Overall, on a good day, Goran was the more intimidating server simply because there was no answer to his out wide serve if he was hitting his spots. With Sampras, for example, he didn't always get the most aces, but he got a lot of unreturnables and shanks. Well, if you're a returner, you'd rather take your chances on shanks and at least being able to reach the ball, than to not touch the ball at all, read Goran.
Just so I don't get in trouble here, Bruguera said that Goran, not Sampras' serve is the best ever. When ON, I would say that is the case...but ONLY if on. People forget that Goran had A LOT of BAD serving days too. Check out the interview comments from the Monte Carlo quarters between him and Ronald Agenor in 93 or 94 for reference. Goran was horribly inconsistent if he didn't have a good rhythm on his serve on any given day. Sampras, however, never really had any BAD serving days I feel. He was always good to great, but I wouldn't say he was ever quite superman level like Goran on his best days.
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