July 2 2007
BRICKER: Slow turf at Wimbledon leaves little room for serve-and-volley
By Charles Bricker
WIMBLEDON, England --- You need only get down on hands and knees for a snail's-eye view of the Centre Court lawn or line up a U.S. Open ball next to a Wimbledon ball to understand why serve-and-volley tennis has disappeared from this Grand Slam.
"The grass is 100 percent rye now," Mark Petchey said. "It grows straight up instead of that mix they used to have, which interlocked with other grasses like a mat and laid down so that when the ball struck, its tendency was to skid. And, no question, the ball is bigger and heavier."
With a career record of 35 wins and 73 losses, Petchey was never mistaken for one of the greats of even British tennis, but he played Wimbledon 11 years and he knows what he's talking about. The game here, he'll tell you, has slowed significantly.
With the retirement of Pete Sampras and Patrick Rafter, the two greatest practitioners of serve-and-volley tennis of the past 15 years, the tactic has been relegated to a change-up by the best players, including Roger Federer and Andy Roddick.
It's the play you throw in at 30-40 or set point --- when your opponent least expects it.
There still are a few players who have so little confidence in their backcourt game that they feel an urgency to be at net as much as possible at Wimbledon, but they found out in the first week how futile it is to come blustering forward on nearly every service. With the slower grass, opponents have time to set up and rifle passing shots by the player at the net.
Two days before the start of Wimbledon, Nicolas Mahut of France defeated Roddick in the final at Queens Club in London, serving and volleying on the faster grass there about 75 percent of the time. He was never broken in 17 games.
Yet he was out in the second round on the slower turf at Wimbledon, his serve-and-volley style nowhere good enough to defeat countryman Richard Gasquet, who took him down in straight sets.
No current British player understands the dynamics of the surface better than Tim Henman, who was groomed to win Wimbledon by being given a heavy dose of serve-and-volley training as a junior.
In his first-round win over Carlos Moya, Henman played serve-and-volley tennis on only 44 percent of his serves. Here is a man who fully understands what they've done to the game at the All England Club.
Coaches continue to teach juniors serve-and-volley because it has its importance. But it's no longer emphasized because the slowing of the courts, not just at Wimbledon but on the hardcourts of the U.S. Open and other major events, has made it imprudent to base an offense on it.
There is also the racket technology. Rackets today are so light and so lethal it's more effective if you can't volley like Sampras or Rafter to stand a few feet behind the baseline and take big cuts on the returns.
If Sampras was 28 today and playing on the "new" grass here, he'd probably still be an elite player because his serve-and-volley game was unmatched --- certainly several cuts above Mahut or Henman. He could probably still win Wimbledon titles, though perhaps not seven in eight years.
A few days ago, he gave an interview to the Times of London in which he commented that he has "a hard time" watching how these guys play today. The bottom line is that nobody comes with heat and can back it up. There's no Richard Krajicek (1996 Wimbledon winner) around to really attack you and take your time away.
"That's the key to winning with serve and volley. Deny the other guy his time."
Sampras retired after winning the 2002 U.S. Open and it's easy to tell he misses the game as it was once played on grass.
"I think the 1990s may have been the toughest time to win Wimbledon," he told the Times. "The grass was fast. The balls were fast. And there were a lot of guys who turned it into a crap shoot --- [Stefan] Edberg, [Boris] Becker, [Goran] Ivanisevic. Those guys really made you uncomfortable."
The reason Sampras could still win today is that, while the courts are slower and the ball bigger, his service location was so good he forced difficult returns or got clean aces.
And part of Sampras' dominance was how he backed up the serve, with an instinctive sense of where the return was going. That allowed him to position himself beautifully for the first volley, and his first volley was deadly.