Chapter 604 Serve and Volley
For Gao Wen, Felipe Lopez's tennis style was a completely new type that he encountered for the first time in his career, and everything needed to be readjusted and adapted.
Everyone says that this is an inevitable trend of the times, but in fact, the phrase "the wave of the times" is not enough to summarize the past and present of a sport.
In fact, tennis has always been grass tennis since its early stages; and serve and volley was once the mainstream and even the only way to play grass tennis.
However, in Wimbledon, the only grass court tournament among the four Grand Slams, there are not many serve-and-volley players on the court. Once upon a time, Wimbledon was considered a paradise for serve-and-volley, but now, serve-and-volley only exists as a sneak attack technique.
Time, technology, and business development have been quietly changing competitive sports, and tennis is no exception.
In 1996, Stefan Edberg retired, and Sampras once said that the last pure serve-and-volley player had left the stage of history, and the so-called "serve-and-volley players" after him had all made adjustments with the progress of the times.
After that, Boris Becker retired in 1999, Pete Sampras retired in 2003, and until Tim Henman retired in 2007, it also announced step by step that pure serve-and-volley players officially disappeared from the sport.
So, what has happened in just ten years? The first thing that has been affected is the change in the type of stadium.
Rod Laver completed the "Annual Grand Slam" in 1969, a feat that no one has been able to replicate to this day. However, it should be noted that among the four Grand Slams that year, the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open were all on grass, which to a certain extent reduced the difficulty of this feat.
The serve-and-volley technique itself was born out of grass. When a tennis ball lands on the grass, it will produce irregular bounces that are difficult to predict and control. So the countermeasures that the players came up with were to avoid letting the tennis ball land as much as possible, complete the interception before it lands, and throw the trouble back to the opponent.
Thus, the serve-and-volley technique came into being.
However, as time goes by, tennis has bid farewell to being an aristocratic sport and has entered millions of households. Because grass is very difficult to cultivate and manage, the convenience of hard courts has become apparent. It can be seen that plastic hard courts and cement hard courts have played an unparalleled role in the widespread popularization of the sport of tennis.
The direct result is that the US Open in the 1970s and the Australian Open in the 1980s both evolved into hard courts.
Naturally, the players adjusted their playing styles and slowly retreated from the net to the baseline.
It is clear from the adjustments made by ATP and WTA in the past twenty years that there are more and more hard court events, fewer and fewer grass court events, and clay court events have remained stable.
Looking at the 2014 tournament calendar, there are 64 professional tournaments with more than 250 points throughout the year, of which 22 are on clay, 6 are on grass, and the other 36 are all on hard courts.
Indoor carpets, which once occupied a place, have completely disappeared.
Among the six grass-court tournaments, Wimbledon is the only major tournament. The other five tournaments all have 200 points. There is not even a 500-point tournament, let alone the Masters.
Although Wimbledon is still the oldest and most special of the four Grand Slams, the so-called grass court season has become a mere formality, which has further squeezed the living space of serve-and-volley players. At the same time, the rapid expansion of hard court events has also affected the playing style of the new generation of players.
Not to mention that the "GOAT competition" among Federer, Nadal and Djokovic has also been directly affected. Just the terrible net skills of the players born after 1990 are enough to deeply feel the impact.
In 1978, 1979 and 1980, Bjorn-Borg won the French Open championship for three consecutive years by relying on baseline topspin. He then won the Wimbledon championship back to back with two weeks of special serve and volley training, writing a legend that has now become history that can never be replicated.
Although Nadal won the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back in 2008, Federer in 2009, and Djokovic in 2021, the playing styles of the three players have not changed fundamentally in terms of game content and techniques.
Among them, the 2008 Wimbledon final, in which Nadal and Federer presented the "best match in history", was a complete baseline showdown.
It is hard to imagine that in the 2002 Wimbledon final, Hewitt and Nalbandian had their first baseline tug-of-war in the final, which triggered a tsunami of negative reviews and was considered a destruction of the tradition of grass court tournaments; but in just six years, the baseline tug-of-war has become a "classic" of Wimbledon.
Federer is a living example.
From his first Wimbledon title in 2003 to his current seven-time title, Federer's serve and volley times have decreased year by year, allowing him to successfully dominate Wimbledon and become the new generation of "King of Grass". However, Federer is already the one among the Big Four who serves and volleys the most frequently and has the best net skills.
Behind the tide of the times, what is truly reflected is the evolution of business development.
Following closely behind is the change in technology.
Just like shark skin has brought revolutionary changes to swimming, tennis has also ushered in a comprehensive innovation in the materials of rackets and strings.
Faster, spinning, heavier, and more accurate, technological innovations can improve the overall performance of the ball, which is destructive and even devastating for serve and volley. Just look at the game between Nadal and Federer.
Whenever Federer goes to the net, Nadal is always able to find a route to break the net. Talent is part of the reason, and technology is another part.
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In 2000, Tennis magazine conducted a professional experiment to test the serve speed of rackets made of different materials. The results were slightly surprising:
The absolute speed difference of serving between rackets made of different materials is only about ten kilometers per hour.
In other words, the innovation of rackets and strings has not improved the serving process as much as imagined. The legendary Martina Navratilova expressed this view in an interview:
The updates in racket technology help the back serve far more than the benefits to the serve.
In the past, receiving serve was a traditional passive skill, but now it has become a strategic hub for offense and defense transitions. The rise of two receiving masters, Djokovic and Murray, is the most representative example.
Ten years ago, Agassi's serve receiving skills were unparalleled in the world, but now there are countless serve receiving experts who can reach such a high level: not to mention the Big Four, Hewitt, Nalbandian, Davydenko, Ferrer and others are all good players. Their serve receiving abilities have been improved to a new level, and it is also an important link for them to seize the initiative in the baseline rounds. This is the progress of the times.
Therefore, if we re-examine the serve-and-volley style from the perspective of improving the serve and serve, we can see the development of the times: the exit of an entire style of play from the stage of history is definitely not accomplished overnight. Standing at the present point in time and looking back at the past, we can clearly see how a style of play has evolved and how it has been eliminated.
(End of this chapter)