Are baseliners more versatile/adaptable than S&V players

[araghava]

An interesting thought occurred to me regarding the whole baseliner vs S&V argument. If you look at the open era, there are a lot of examples of baseliners changing their game to S&V and having success on grass.

e.g
Borg won 5 wimbledons by S&V'ing on 1st serve
Lendls reached 2 wimbledon finals
Wilander won the Australian on grass. He beat Lendl at the U.S open by S&V'ing

However i can't think of 1 S&V player who successfully adopted a baseline strategy. McEnroe, Edberg and Stich reached the french open finals. However they did so by S&V'ing. McEnroe and Edberg would definitely had got killed if they had tried to stay back.

Seems to be it's possible to go from baseline to S&V but the reverse is much harder.

 

[travlerajm]

An interesting thought occurred to me regarding the whole baseliner vs S&V argument. If you look at the open era, there are a lot of examples of baseliners changing their game to S&V and having success on grass.

e.g
Borg won 5 wimbledons by S&V'ing on 1st serve
Lendls reached 2 wimbledon finals
Wilander won the Australian on grass. He beat Lendl at the U.S open by S&V'ing

However i can't think of 1 S&V player who successfully adopted a baseline strategy. McEnroe, Edberg and Stich reached the french open finals. However they did so by S&V'ing. McEnroe and Edberg would definitely had got killed if they had tried to stay back.

Seems to be it's possible to go from baseline to S&V but the reverse is much harder.

Becker did pretty well trying to stay back. He stayed back a lot to win the US Open, but he started his career as a pure S&V'er.

 

[Tchocky]

Who knows? It's different for every player.

 

[NoBadMojo]

Thats because the baseline game is so much easier to do than playing all court or serve and volley, so logical that takes longer to develop and some dont have the skills to ever develop it.

Edberg had to learn to stay back quite a lot more as his career went on and people got on to his serve, and his forehand improved over the years. Ditto for Rafter as it became too risky to play serve volley..he learned to find a way to win more points from the backcourt as they got on to his serve and his shoulder was giving him probs

 

[vkartikv]

One obvious exception is Roddick who doesn't know how to volley. In fact, most baseliners are not comfortable at the net and get there only to try to act agressive or mix things up a little. Also, Borg winning Wimbledon is vastly different from Nadal reaching the finals y'day. They are making the surface more baseliner-friendly by slowing it down which is why Borg's record is such a huge achievement. Hewitt won in '02 but if you have seen his skills at the net, you'll be very impressed.

 

[Moose Malloy]

This is a strange argument. All tennis players have groundstrokes, even Edberg & McEnroe. They weren't Paul Annacone or Max Mirnyi you know.

Not all tennis players have volleys, it isn't a required stroke to play the game.

Mac, Edberg, & Stich have won many baseline rallies in their career(& at the French) its not like they were at the net every point.

Not sure what your point is. You think Mac/Edberg should have tried to win the French by playing exclusively from the baseline? Why? Just to prove a point?

The fact that Federer chooses to play Nadal primarily from the baseline, even on grass, shows that great players like to stick with their strengths most of the time.

Borg, Lenld, & Wilander were much more 1 dimensional compared to Mac. They had to change their game to become more complete in order to compete on faster surfaces. Mac didn't, which shows how ridiculuosly talented he was.

A good way to show that fast court players are more versatile than slow courters is to compare how grasscourt players(Goran, Sampras, Krajicek, Rafter) have done on clay compared to claycourters(Muster, Bruguera, Kuerten, Costa, Gaudio, etc.) on grass.

Most great grasscourters have managed some good results on grass, while the claycourters have not, for the most part.

 

[North]

Agree with the posters pointing out it is easier to learn to win from the baseline and with pointing out that S&Vers certainly do have accessible baseline games, for the most part.

The baseliner would be making a choice to try to S&V only in the situations where S&V would give a specific advantage (eg: grass courts as fast as they used to be, etc) to win. It seems like S&Vers simply choose not to try to win from the baseline, even though it's easier and they likely could. This used to be a very viable choice (choosing to win with S&V) before the "perfect storm" of factors like racquets, strings, courts, etc. came along and wound up benefitting baseliners more than S&Vers. Definitely has made the game more one-dimensional. Sigh....

 

[AAAA]

A good way to show that fast court players are more versatile than slow courters is to compare how grasscourt players(Goran, Sampras, Krajicek, Rafter) have done on clay compared to claycourters(Muster, Bruguera, Kuerten, Costa, Gaudio, etc.) on grass.

When you think about it the comparison is biased.

 

[Rickson]

An interesting thought occurred to me regarding the whole baseliner vs S&V argument. If you look at the open era, there are a lot of examples of baseliners changing their game to S&V and having success on grass.

e.g
Borg won 5 wimbledons by S&V'ing on 1st serve
Lendls reached 2 wimbledon finals
Wilander won the Australian on grass. He beat Lendl at the U.S open by S&V'ing

However i can't think of 1 S&V player who successfully adopted a baseline strategy. McEnroe, Edberg and Stich reached the french open finals. However they did so by S&V'ing. McEnroe and Edberg would definitely had got killed if they had tried to stay back.

Seems to be it's possible to go from baseline to S&V but the reverse is much harder.

It depends on the person more than the style. In mixed martial arts, we're always asked if strikers could adapt better to grappling than grapplers to striking and the truth is that it's up to the individual and not the style. My opinion is that a serve/volleyer who chips and slices a lot, will have trouble adapting to the baseline game while the serve/volleyer who approaches on both topspin and backspin shots can adapt much faster to the baseline game. I've also noticed that baseliners who attack the short ball adapt to net play better than baseliners who prefer to dropshot the short ball, but like I said, it's up to the individual because there are good volleyers who dropshot and poor volleyers who attack short balls.

 

[superman1]

Look at Henman. He's staying back all the time now and it has worked well for him, at least recently. Maybe of other serve and volleyers were forced to play under slower conditions, they would also adapt. It's foolish to say that serve and volleyers are less versatile since they are constantly covering the entire court and they have much better touch than the baseliners.

 

[shrakkie]

isnt federer a clear exampl of some1 s and v less and more to the baseline?look at wimby 01 compared to now and it is evident that he s and v far less lol

 

[Supernatural_Serve]

I believe that we are in an era of tennis where the bias toward player development is a strong all court game. Its where the game's at, the equipment helps enable it, and many athletes are having success playing this style.

But, there will come a day, not too distant, where the world class players will largely be 6' 5" or taller (they've been getting bigger and taller every year), run as fast as Rafa (he's not that fast relative to many other sports filled with world class sprinters), and serve like Karlovic (we are seeing very tall servers banging the crap out of serves with today's racquets) and when that day comes, they will all be serve and volleyers.

 

[baros]

yes it is harder for a serve/volley player to change for a baseliner it is much more able to ad volley to there arsenal.
________
M44

 

[Marat Safinator]

Who knows? It's different for every player.

yes, asolutely right. It's on versatile he player is, not there style.

 

[Andres]

Most great grasscourters have managed some good results on grass, while the claycourters have not, for the most part.

That DOES make sense. That's why they're grasscourter. Imagine a grasscourter with poor grass results :mrgreen:

 

[Eviscerator]

They are making the surface more baseliner-friendly by slowing it down which is why Borg's record is such a huge achievement. Hewitt won in '02 but if you have seen his skills at the net, you'll be very impressed.

Not to take anything away from Hewitt, but they switched the grass after the 2001 finals and that is what helped give us a Hewitt vs. Nalbandian final in 2002. They have slowed things down even more since then.
Prior to that, there had not been a single "baseliner" to win Wimbledon from 1983 to 2001 with the one exception of Agassi in 1992.