
It's the last set of the London 2012 singles final. Andy Murray steps up to the baseline to deliver the opening serve. After a few calculations he tosses the ball in the air with supreme confidence. He has maths on his side and it has given him the secret to the perfect serve...
Ok – it might be a little far-fetched to imagine the Olympic tennis champions performing calculations on the baseline but Nick Ovenden, a mathematician from University College London, has. "A fast serve can be an extremely effective weapon in tennis," says Ovenden. But no matter how fast you serve, you'll give your opponent a chance to adapt if you repeat the same serve each time. "The perfect tennis serve relies on keeping your opponent guessing about how the ball may bounce out of the service box – this can be achieved by putting spin on the ball."

Figure 1: The spinning of a tennis ball as it flies through the air (the ball is moving into the page and spinning around an axis at an angle of
Ovenden worked with Acer and Intel to mathematically analyse the delicate balance of forces involved in a tennis serve as part of a series of activities to celebrate the launch of the new Acer Intel Ultrabook series. His analysis includes the three forces acting on a tennis ball as it flies through the air: gravity, aerodynamic drag, and something called the Magnus effect which results from the ball's spin.
The Magnus effect comes from the ball spinning as it moves through the fluid (the air). "The fluid near the ball's surface that is travelling towards the flow will be impeded and thus slows down, increasing fluid pressure," says Ovenden. "In contrast, the fluid near the opposite surface of the ball that is travelling away from the flow will be speeded up lowering fluid pressure locally. The pressure difference across the ball then leads to a net force that curves the ball towards the low pressure side."
A slice serve happens when the player hits the ball so that it spins like a top (
Ovenden has calculated that the angle of deviation,

Figure 2: A slice serve occurs when the ball is hit with side spin, causing the ball to curve to one side.
The player can also put top spin on their serve, by brushing their racket up the back and over the top of the ball as it leaves the racket (
In fact, introduce too much top spin and you are much more likely to hit the net. To ensure you don't score a net fault Ovendon has calculated a constraint that echoes the constraint for top spin. In order to clear the net your serve must satisfy:
The combination of slice spin and top spin makes the ball's path and bounce far harder to predict for your opponent. And varying these with each serve could be the winning formula, as long as you satisfy these three important constraints. Perhaps there's still time for Murray's coach to include some maths in his preparations for the match today...