Death of a Serve-Volleyer

We're continuing on in our quest to tackle some of the most important issues facing tennis, and today's post focuses on the death of serve-and-volley. One of the things that makes tennis so enjoyable to watch is contrast; battles between Sampras and Agassi showcased a huge server (Sampras), following his delivery into net and looking to pressure with the volley vs. a power baseliner (Agassi) with laser passing shots. Attacking vs. defending. Even their personalities were opposed: the conservative Pete vs. Agassi, the Vegas showman. Matches between them were the pinnacle of the sport in the 90s.



Today's pro game has evolved into a power-baseline contest, where two combatants sit on the baseline and trade haymakers until one of them errs, or manages to exploit a small opening and rips a winner. I think that the reason this sameness hasn't totally bored the tennis-watching populace is Federer and the artistry he brings to the table. His ability to elevate a normal tennis match to the sublime by hitting jaw-dropping winners makes you forget that the style he and everyone else employs is relatively low-risk.

That in a nutshell is why serve-and-volley is Must See TV; it's a high-risk high-reward proposition. When a player starts to rush forward, you know the point is going to end, one way or another, in the next couple of shots. It's the climax of the point. Charging the net is a way of throwing down; in essence the player is saying "I'm bringin' it! What are you gonna do about it?"

The generalization of court speed is one of the reasons for the death of serve and volley. Clay courts play a little faster and grass and hard courts have been slowed down a bit. This narrower spectrum allows for a power-baseline game to translate well from surface to surface. But the unrecognized-until-recently main factor behind this problem is the new string technology. Namely, polyester strings such as Luxilon. The polyester is a "dead" string, which means that you drop the tension by 10%, take a huge swing, and the ball still won't go out. The huge cuts you can now take enable you to generate incredible amounts of spin. The importance of topspin in the pro game is best explained in David Foster Wallace's Roger Federer As Religious Experience (relevant section copied here):

Extreme topspin is the hallmark of today’s power-baseline game. This is something that Wimbledon’s sign gets right. Why topspin is so key, though, is not commonly understood. What’s commonly understood is that high-tech composite rackets impart much more pace to the ball, rather like aluminum baseball bats as opposed to good old lumber. But that dogma is false. The truth is that, at the same tensile strength, carbon-based composites are lighter than wood, and this allows modern rackets to be a couple ounces lighter and at least an inch wider across the face than the vintage Kramer and Maxply. It’s the width of the face that’s vital. A wider face means there’s more total string area, which means the sweet spot’s bigger. With a composite racket, you don’t have to meet the ball in the precise geometric center of the strings in order to generate good pace. Nor must you be spot-on to generate topspin, a spin that (recall) requires a tilted face and upwardly curved stroke, brushing over the ball rather than hitting flat through it — this was quite hard to do with wood rackets, because of their smaller face and niggardly sweet spot. Composites’ lighter, wider heads and more generous centers let players swing faster and put way more topspin on the ball...and, in turn, the more topspin you put on the ball, the harder you can hit it, because there’s more margin for error. Topspin causes the ball to pass high over the net, describe a sharp arc, and come down fast into the opponent’s court (instead of maybe soaring out).

So, today's composite frames have a bigger sweetspot, which means you have a higher margin for error when swinging at the ball. Coupled with dead strings that also let you take a huge cut, pros can now swing away like a juiced-up Barry Bonds and not only impart tremendous pace to the ball, but enough topspin to bring it down into the court. This is a double-whammy for those brave souls who would charge the net. Not only are the balls coming at them with the speed of rifle shot, they are also dipping like crazy due to the jacked-up spin. When Sampras saw the way the strings turned Zeros into Heroes, he dubbed it "Cheatalon". Cheat-a-lon! Like Cheat-to-win. Clearly a shout-out to me.

Some experts in the game have posited that the lack of serve-volleyers is only cyclical, and in time some will show up. I state that this is bogus. The advantages that Luxilon offers baseliners doesn't apply to volleyers. When you volley, you apply a slight bit of underspin to the ball, and the dead string ain't doing a thing for you there. If anything, it takes away a bit of the "feel" you need to control touch volleys. And once that ball bounces on the other side of the net, a pro with half a second to set up for his shot is going to use you for target practice.

When Blizzard saw that the Archmage was nuking the competition thanks to a way-too-strong Water Elemental did they say "I think that this is part of a cycle. Eventually a maverick Death Knight player will come in and we'll have balance"? No, they Nerfed the Archmage! We need to make the proactive step of speeding up hard and grass courts. One variable at a time here, Lords of Tennis. We changed surface speeds AND brought in new string, and the pendulum swung all the way to the baseline. Let's speed up the surface again and see if we can't get volleys to become a viable option again. The resulting contrast in styles of play would help put a stronger, more appealing product back on court.