MALAGA, Spain — Sara Errani stands at the baseline and exhales deeply. She is about to hit a second serve, with Italy up match point against Poland. A place in the Billie Jean King Cup final is at stake. So Errani does what she has done many, many times before: she hits an underarm serve.

The ball floats into the service box and onto the racket of Iga Swiatek, one of two women’s players who can claim to be the best in the world. Swiatek is on to it in a flash and hits her return deep to Errani’s forehand. Errani again does what she has done many, many times before: she gets the ball back.

She does the same on her opponent’s next shot, hoisting a backhand lob into the air. Swiatek loops a forehand volley long and Italy is through to the final for the second year in a row.

Errani collapses to the ground in relief, celebrating with her partner Jasmine Paolini and shaking hands with the defeated opponents a few seconds later, before allowing herself a what-have-I-just-done smile.

For Errani, 37, it was another successful heist in a career full of them.

On Wednesday, she added a fourth Billie Jean King Cup title (three of which came when it was the Federation Cup) to the career Golden Grand Slam in doubles she completed this year by winning gold at the 2024 Paris Olympics alongside Paolini. It has been a stunning year for Errani, who also won the mixed doubles title at the U.S. Open with another Italian, Andrea Vavassori. She thought 2024 would be her last on tour, having won her last major 10 years ago.

“My thought last year was to play in the Olympics and then stop playing tennis, but we’re playing great in doubles and I’m having so much fun,” she said in an interview in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the WTA Tour Finals earlier this month.

Completing the doubles Golden Slam in Paris put Errani in an elite group of just seven women. When looking back on her career, the underarm serve to Swiatek on Monday will feel like a defining moment for a player who uses the contentious tactic more consistently and more particularly than anybody else.

Her story with the underarm serve goes to the heart of her tennis life.

The underarm serve is one of tennis’s most curious shots, caught between the poles of disrespectful trick shot and tactical masterstroke. Big servers like Nick Kyrgios can use it to take advantage of opponents who are standing back anticipating a 140mph rocket. There is an element of showmanship too; this is very much the case with Alexander Bublik. He might be blessed with a big serve, but he is also the current player probably most synonymous with the cheeky alternative.

Other players use it against specific opponents. World No. 68 Alexandre Muller told The Athletic at Wimbledon that he had specifically practised the shot to use it against Daniil Medvedev, who has one of the deepest return positions in the sport.

Corentin Moutet, a master of the shot, started practising underarm serves after a shoulder injury. He has since incorporated them into his game, doing so to great acclaim at this year’s French Open. He used the underarm serve 12 times in his third-round win against Sebastian Ofner, winning nine of those points. He is the opposite of a player like Kyrgios, using the underarm serve because he doesn’t expect to win free points behind his first serve; there is no drop-off in expected value.

Errani’s reason for using the shot will be familiar to many amateur players: she just doesn’t trust her serve.

Errani stands at 5ft 5in (164cm) which is diminutive by modern tennis standards — just like her partner Paolini, whose serve has some heat despite her height of 5ft 4in. Errani does not have this pace, and her height has contributed to a shot often derided as the worst serve in the sport.

Smiling, she says it would be amazing to be a bit taller. “Many times, I think about that.”

Instead of letting her serve become a complete albatross, Errani has used her ground skills, tactical nous and the shock factor of a serve that regularly registers around 60mph (96.5kph) on the speed gun to reach the very top of tennis in singles and doubles.

She reached the 2012 French Open final in singles and cracked the world’s top five a year later, despite her opponents feeling that they ought to break her every single game. Instead, they are bamboozled by her incredible dexterity at the net or from the back of the court, as well as struggling to read and return her serve.

Sara Errani has struggled with her regulation serve throughout her career (Thomas Samson / AFP via Getty Images)

“It comes so slow and it kind of floats in the air,” Mirjana Lucic-Baroni said in a news conference after losing to Errani in the 2014 U.S. Open fourth round, a match in which Errani’s average serve speed was 76mph.

“It was really difficult to time the balls.” Errani’s serve became something of a meme in 2024 after Daniil Medvedev completely failed to return it at all during a mixed doubles match at the Paris Olympics.

Errani herself said in a news conference after that match that she has a different approach to serving from most players: “I don’t try to make winners,” she said.

“I just try to make kick, make slice, try to change my game. I need to start the point where I want. So sometimes is better for me to serve not that fast, because if you serve fast the ball is coming (back) faster.”

That conviction hasn’t always been there. Her serve reached a nadir in April 2019 when she was only recently back from a 10-month doping suspension for ingesting letrozole, which was increased from an original two months by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Errani said she was “really disgusted” by the length of the ban, saying that her case was because of contamination after her mother, who was taking letrozole for breast cancer, dropped pills on their kitchen counter where they prepared meals.

At the Copa Colsanitas in Bogota, Colombia, Errani served 18 double faults per match in three consecutive matches (all of which she won) before hitting around half her serves underarm in a quarter-final defeat to Astra Sharma. Later that year at a low-level event in Asuncion, Paraguay, Errani took the nuclear option by serving underarm for the entire tournament. She reached the final, copping a huge amount of social media abuse in the process.

In response, she wrote on Instagram: “In Italy, I keep being insulted by a lot of people, regarding mainly my serve.

“If it is not ok for you, send a letter to WTA asking to change rules about serve or ask them to disqualify me for awful serve. If instead you just have other problems with me, send a letter to Santa.”

Five years on, she says her serve had completely overtaken everything else.

“I couldn’t compete. I was thinking all the time about my serve,” she says.

“My coach said: ‘Do one tournament all underarm and just compete.’ It was to try to make my head free from, not panic, but the tough moments.”

Despite recovering from those yips, Errani then endured an anxiety dream of a service game at the 2020 French Open during a second-round defeat to Kiki Bertens. Errani was given two time violations after five aborted ball tosses and landed only one overarm serve, with one attempt missing the baseline. Serving for the set, she was broken to love.

“Sometimes it’s there and it can come out, but I try to manage it,” she says of the nerves that can grip her when serving.

“When I was practising, my serve was good. But then in matches, I was feeling the block, the panic. I know it’s still there. It’s not like it’s in the past.”

Errani, an unwitting trailblazer, can laugh at the fact that the underarm serve has come back into fashion, certainly on the men’s side, over the past few years. “If it can be a good tactic, why not?” she laughs. Against Swiatek, the decision was more of a vibe.

“I just advised Jasmine after the first serve, so it’s just I feel it and I did it, just like that, not thinking too much,” she said in a news conference after the match.

At 37, Errani is the Italian team’s most experienced player, and as her team-mates chorused in Wednesday’s celebratory news conference she is “the brain of the team”.

Errani resembles her compatriot Jorginho, the Brazilian-born Italy and Arsenal midfielder who is so intelligent that he is a reference point for everybody else despite not being the most physically gifted.

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Paolini, who is the world No. 4 in singles and a two-time Grand Slam finalist this year, constantly looks to Errani for guidance on the doubles court.

“She wants me to tell her what to do every point – even when she serves, she likes me to tell her where to put it and I’m trying to push her to tell me what she’s feeling more,” Errani said.

Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini have formed a formidable partnership on the doubles court. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

Whatever the tactics, the Errani-Paolini partnership is contributing to a golden period for tennis in Italy.

On the men’s side, Jannik Sinner is the world No. 1 and has won two Grand Slams this year. He is part of an Italy team that is hoping to defend the Davis Cup this week and make it a double with the victorious BJK Cup group. Errani, who lived through a period when she was one of the ‘Fab Four’ Italian women who all reached a Grand Slam final and the world’s top 10 between 2010 and 2014 (Francesca Schiavone, Roberta Vinci and Flavia Pennetta were the others), believes that all the current top players from her country are pushing each other to greater heights.

And Errani has no desire to leave the golden age behind just yet.  “I said to Jasmine: ‘I’ll continue next year for sure and then we’ll see,’” she says.

After the genre-defining underarm serve against Swiatek, this wily veteran still has at least one last heist in her.

(Top photo: Fran Santiago / Getty Images for ITF)

FAU football, which rose to national relevance under Lane Kiffin, has backslid over the last five seasons under Willie Taggart and the recently fired Tom Herman. The Owls’ new coaching search, though, might be the most interesting one of this year’s coaching carousel.

And it got a little more interesting this week, as Miami great Ray Lewis has made it known that he really wants to be the Owls’ next coach, a source briefed on Lewis’ thinking said Wednesday.

The 49-year-old Lewis, a 13-time Pro Bowl linebacker, has observed the model of what Deion Sanders has done transforming Colorado football in the past two years and is expected to present a plan to the Owls’ leadership in the next week for how he’d do something similar at FAU.

Lewis’ old buddy, fellow Pro Football Hall of Famer Cris Carter, is the Owls’ executive director of player engagement and is expected to be a good resource for Lewis. A big hurdle for Lewis is, unlike Sanders, he doesn’t have any previous college coaching experience.

“Ray wants it bad,” the source briefed on Lewis’ thinking said. Lewis lives five minutes from the FAU campus. “He really wants it.”

Lewis, however, is not considered a serious candidate at this point, according to a source involved in the coaching search.

The frontrunner for the FAU vacancy, according to multiple sources involved in the search, is Ole Miss offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. The 31-year-old son of former Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis, who lives a half-hour from Boca Raton, is the play caller at a hot Rebels program and runs the nation’s No. 2 offense, putting up 7.58 yards per play.

The younger Weis was Kiffin’s former offensive coordinator at FAU and knows the program well. He has a lot of support from some key FAU people, according to sources involved in the search. Kiffin has strong influence back at FAU and will push Weis for the job, those sources said. Financially, Weis — who makes $1.65 million at Ole Miss — might have to take a pay cut to go back to FAU but a source briefed on the matter said he doubted that would stop Weis from wanting this job.

Other expected candidates for the FAU job

Georgia Tech offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner might make more sense for the Owls. The 43-year-old helped turn Tech from the ACC’s No. 11 offense to No. 3 last year. In 2022, the year before he was hired in Atlanta, Georgia Tech ranked last in the ACC in red zone offense. His offense is No. 2 in the ACC in red zone TD percentage.

Penn State assistant head coach/co-OC Ja’Juan Seider is a well-regarded coach with deep local ties and is expected to get some consideration. The 47-year-old Belle Glade, Fla., product was a star quarterback at Florida A&M and is well-connected around South Florida. Players really respond to him. He also has been a key assistant in Happy Valley, at Marshall and West Virginia.

UCF offensive coordinator Tim Harris Jr. has spent his whole coaching career in the state. He was a four-time NCAA All-American in track at Miami and then spent five years as a successful high school coach in South Florida at Miami’s Booker T. Washington High before spending seven seasons at FIU. Since then, he’s coached at Miami and UCF, where he has produced the Big 12’s most prolific offense at 6.76 yards per play.

UNLV offensive coordinator Brennan Marion, a former Miami Dolphins wideout who lived in Boynton Beach, not far from the Owls’ campus, might be an intriguing option. He has proven to be a terrific offensive coordinator in two stops at the FCS level before an excellent two-season run of transforming the Rebels into a winning program. Last year he led the Rebels to No. 6 in the country in third down offense and No. 8 in red zone offense despite his starting QB going down early and having to turn to an unproven freshman in Jayden Maiava, who went on to win Mountain West Freshman of the Year honors. This year, the Rebels, with Maiava having left for USC, are No. 6 in the nation in scoring at 39.9 points per game.

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FSU defensive backs coach Pat Surtain could be in play at his alma mater Southern Miss, but he also has strong ties here. He played a decade in the NFL before becoming a top high school coach in South Florida. The 48-year-old spent one season with the Miami Dolphins as an NFL assistant before joining FSU’s staff in 2023.

Georgia assistant head coach Todd Hartley, 39, spent three years coaching in South Florida on the Canes’ staff. He is someone Kirby Smart has leaned on in elevating the program since Hartley’s return to Athens in 2019. Southern Miss also has a lot of interest in Hartley for its head coaching vacancy.

Duke defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke, a Manny Diaz protege who was on the staff at Miami, is a rising star at defensive coordinator. He’s had a strong debut season in Durham and also could be in play.

Miami defensive ends coach Jason Taylor. The Pro Football Hall of Famer, who had been a high school assistant for five seasons at powerhouse St. Thomas Aquinas, is a legendary figure around South Florida. In 2007, Taylor won the NFL’s prestigious Walter Payton Man of the Year honors and has been an excellent addition to the Canes staff the past two seasons.

— Chris Vannini contributed to this report

Required reading

(Photo: Rob Carr / Getty Images)

SEATTLE — When the SuperSonics left here in 2008, Brent Barry felt it in his gut. There was an emptiness, a sadness so pronounced that he was moved to put pen to paper.

At the time, Barry was preparing for training camp with the San Antonio Spurs, but part of his heart was still in Seattle, a bond forged through his five seasons as a wing with the Sonics. Now the team was no more thanks to an abrupt transaction that uprooted the franchise to Oklahoma City.

Barry’s mind was numbed with a blur of memories he captured in his poem, “When It Rains.”

“… and here I sit in my office space and think of my career

And what to say to my two sons, did the team just disappear?

I played in KeyArena, I live on Queen Anne Hill

I played pinball at Shorty’s after games, and ate burgers at both Red Mills

I would have some chowder down at Dukes, and watch Sea Planes take their flight

And find myself in Fremont if I needed a beer that night

I saw Star Wars at Cinerama, tossed a pitch at Safeco Field,

Drove all the way to Bellingham to see Pearl Jam and Yield …”

Sixteen years later, a collection of Sonics jerseys extends wall-to-wall inside the Simply Seattle store downtown. From Detlef Schrempf to Gary Payton to Ray Allen to Kevin Durant, the jerseys of Sonics legends are still a hot commodity.

“We get people from New Zealand, London, from all over,” store manager Kate Wansley said. “The Sonics are a big thing, and now everyone is excited about what could happen.”

What could happen has many in this Northwest metropolis tense with anticipation. In September, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league would address NBA expansion at some point this season, which prompted an already simmering movement in Seattle to bubble over.

Since 2008, Seattle has been waiting, expecting a franchise to return. And now, with overtures of the NBA’s first expansion since 2004, there is an overriding sentiment that Seattle is due.

“There’s just too much karma that says put a team back in Seattle,” says George Karl, who coached the Sonics from 1992-98, leading them to an NBA Finals appearance in 1996. “I don’t know more than anybody else, but my feeling is … that it can happen. It should happen.”

Karl is sipping iced tea and soaking in a picturesque view of Seattle’s Elliott Bay on a sun-splashed Thursday. He lives in Denver but is in town to help promote, support and encourage Seattle’s candidacy should Silver and the NBA Board of Governors decide to proceed with expansion.

As the Seahawks played host to the San Francisco 49ers at Lumen Field, Karl and former Sonics players Dale Ellis and Rashard Lewis attended a social event on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower that included Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle Sports Commission president and CEO Beth Knox and several business leaders.

“It’s a lot of anticipation; I feel like we are hanging on the edge of our seats, waiting,” Knox said. “We are ready.”

The event was important enough for Harrell that he postponed plans for his 66th birthday (he was quick to note he shared his birthday with Sonics legend Gus Williams) so he could spread what he calls “the buzz” about Seattle’s viability for expansion.

“We need to make sure the decision-makers — the NBA commissioner, the administration and co-owners — realize this is a very attractive market, and we have the fan base,” Harrell said. “They sort of know it, but this was 2008 when we lost the team, and we have a whole new generation of people in town, so we need to assure them we have that kind of spirit.”

In September, Silver tempered expectations when he said the league “is not quite ready” to discuss expansion before adding that eventually it will be broached. “What we’ve told interested parties is: ‘Thank you for your interest, we will get back to you,’ ” Silver said. “That’s certainly the case in Seattle.”

Still, hopes haven’t been this high here since 2013, when a bid to relocate the Sacramento Kings to Seattle reached a vote of NBA governors but was turned down 22-8 after Sacramento came up with new ownership.

Ellis, who played for seven NBA teams, said the city’s diversity, food and fan base kept him in Seattle for 20 years after his career ended. The 41-year history of the franchise, which includes the 1979 NBA title, is why he believes so passionately that the league should return. It’s why he flew to Seattle to support Thursday’s movement, a movement that he says stands more than a chance of landing a return of the Sonics.

“Chance? No, it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen,” Ellis said. “They just haven’t made the announcement yet. There will be two franchises, one here in Seattle, and one in Las Vegas.”

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Like so many former Sonics players and coaches, Barry felt he didn’t just play in Seattle, he felt he was part of Seattle. So losing the Sonics felt like losing part of himself.

It is that player-community connection that has made this movement to revive the Sonics unique. Other cities have lost NBA franchises — Vancouver, San Diego, Kansas City — but none have had former players and coaches campaigning for a return like Seattle.

Lewis, who played his first nine NBA seasons with the Sonics, flew into Seattle from Houston motivated by two factors: the history and the fans.

“Seattle has a part of me; I became a man here,” Lewis said. “And the fans … I still remember Big Lo (super fan Lorin Sandretzky), and fans pulling up to the airport when we arrived. There’s history, so much history here, and that’s why they have to have a team here.”

The 1990s in particular were a magical time for Seattle. Microsoft was booming. Bands from Seattle — Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden — were leading the grunge explosion. “Singles” and “Sleepless in Seattle” hit movie screens. Ken Griffey Jr. was a superstar. And Payton, Kemp and the fiery Karl were headlining SportsCenter highlights.

“It all had this mystical essence to it,” Barry said. “Because nobody wanted to go to the Pacific Northwest. It was so far away, the weather was bad … but there was a lot of cool stuff happening in and around that place. So it had this mystical quality to it.”

Added Karl: “The city was blossoming, the music was blossoming, the city was growing, the Mariners were good … everything was just in rhythm. There was a rhythm that Seattle was cool. Pearl Jam, Starbucks, (Microsoft’s Steve) Ballmer … and (the Sonics) were good.

“Unfortunately, Michael (Jordan) was in the league.”

The electricity between the Sonics and the Seattle scene made for lasting bonds. For fans and the players.

“Spilling out from KeyArena after a game meant that you were in the bloodstream of the city,” said Barry, now an assistant coach with Phoenix. “You got out of the arena and you could walk across the street to Lazy J’s (Jalisco’s) and do karaoke with a bunch of fans who were just at the game. You could go to First Street and hop into a steakhouse and have a meal with fans who just left the game.

“To lose all that … it was a gut punch to a city that loved basketball, loved its team and had a relationship with the team that was unique.”

Portland Trail Blazers play-by-play announcer Kevin Calabro, who announced Sonics games for 22 years, said fans still ask him regularly if and when the Sonics will return, which is attributed to the connection formed during those memorable years in the 1990s.

“You had this great amalgam of cutting-edge technology with the internet coming to life and this great music scene and the Sonics bursting at the seams,” Calabro said. “And it all came together on winter nights at The Barn, as we used to call KeyArena. Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam bassist) was down in the baseline seats all the time, Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam singer) was around, Screaming Trees … all these bands would show up.

“And when George Karl took over, it just lit a fire. There were so many great characters … and they were all involved with the community. You could feel them, touch them, see them at the clubs, hang with them. It was special.”

Wansley, the store manager who hangs the Sonics jerseys from wall to wall, is a lifelong Seattle resident. She said her deepest bonds are with the Sonics because she experienced them in everyday life. She saw Nate McMillan and Sam Perkins at Bellevue Square, Kemp and Gary in the store, Dana Barros here, Schrempf there.

“It was something that just connects you to them,” Wansley said. “You would go to the game, then see them out … and I don’t know how it is in other cities, but they were just out in the community so much. It would be like, ‘Hey, I just saw you play …’ ”

Seattle has been down this road of anticipation before. The 2013 bid to relocate the Kings to Seattle was so close to happening — and so ugly in its particulars — that its downfall left some scars.

But the overall sentiment today is that Seattle is well positioned, if not a leader when expansion becomes a reality. Much of the optimism stems from Climate Pledge Arena, the refurbished KeyArena, which now houses the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.

“There literally hasn’t been a week where I haven’t been asked about the Sonics or the NBA or how we got screwed,” said Bob Whitsitt, who was president and general manager of the Sonics from 1986-94. “And for years, I said to them — right or wrong — that Seattle was not in a position to even be considered for a team until they have an NBA-ready facility.

“And that giant hurdle has now been cleared with Climate Pledge Arena. As a city, we know we have a facility that works. That doesn’t guarantee you a team, but you can be guaranteed not to get a team by not having a facility. So, the biggest thing has been taken off the board.”

Whitsitt still lives in Seattle and said he is encouraged by a potential ownership group led by Kraken owners David Bonderman and his daughter, Samantha Holloway. Bonderman also is a minority owner of the Boston Celtics.

“My support is behind them,” Whitsitt said. “They are the right ones. They are the perfect people to lead the thing. And the Seattle market is not only great, it is ready.”

Last month, more than 18,000 sold out the LA Clippers and Trail Blazers exhibition game at Climate Pledge Arena, which more than caught the eye of coaches Chauncey Billups of the Blazers and Tyronn Lue of the Clippers.

“I mean, everybody talks about it,” Billups said. “This is obviously a desired city, a market that people love … it makes the most sense. It’s already been very successful, the market has, so it makes a lot of sense. We just have to wait on it.”

Added Lue: “It’s a great environment, a great place to play … they’ve done a great job with this arena.”

Brian Robinson, a Seattle real estate investor, heads Seattle NBA Fans, the group that hosted the event with Karl, Lewis, Ellis and the mayor. He has 250 community leaders and 50 CEOs behind his movement. He also headed a 2010 group that tried to find an arena solution to lure the Sonics back. He said then, it was difficult to get business leaders and companies behind him.

“Now, no one ever says no,” said Robinson, 51. “People see the change in tone from the commissioner and they see a path. Everyone wants to be a part of it. I just feel like the people of Seattle are over the negativity and they are ready to have this journey be something meaningful.”

Mayor Harrell and Knox, the CEO of the Seattle Sports Commission, are envisioning a future where Sonics players become role models and inspire youth to not only participate in basketball, but dream. Seattle has a long history of producing NBA talent, including Brandon Roy, Jason Terry, Jamal Crawford, Paolo Banchero and Dejounte Murray. Barry thinks the Sonics can help inspire others.

“How do you dream bigger if you don’t see it in front of you?” Barry asked. “I was thinking if I never went to Golden State games as a kid to watch Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway and Mitch Richmond, how much of my devotion and love of the game would have been depleted by not having the touch, the autograph, the memories? The impact can’t be overstated.

“There’s almost 20 years of kids in Seattle who never saw one game in their city of LeBron James, one of the greatest players who ever played. Twenty years of kids, and parents for that matter, who haven’t had that community, that environment, that experience. It hurts.”

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Last month, Barry thought back to the day when he penned the “When It Rains” poem. He rifled through his files and found it.

“Even reading it again, I was like, ‘Man, I still feel this way. It sucks,” Barry said. “I was sad. Legitimately sad. But right now, I don’t think there has ever been more sentiment or momentum than right now. And I hope it’s not another carrot in front of the rabbit situation. I hope this momentum is true and honest and there is potential for the green and gold to be back there.”

It was the same thought he had 16 years ago, in San Antonio as he closed his poem.

“… A chapter left unwritten, a generation with a gap,

Forty-one years of NBA action and now no one can clap

But here is a silver lining … above every cloud’s a sun

And the possibility is something we hold on to even if slim to none

For faith and hope and love are tenants

Of the days as one grows old

And for all at stake, those clouds will break

And we will see the green and gold.”

(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; photos: Steph Chambers, Tim DeFrisco, Otto Greule Jr, Andy Hayt, Jeff Reinking, Terrence Vaccaro / Getty Images)