Roddick's volleys

[crosscourt]

The commentators on Sky think that Roddick isn't helped in his volleying by playing with a long racket. Are there any top 100 s and v players who use a long racket?

[AAAA]

The racquet may make some difference but he needs alot more than a just a racquet change.

[William Bedford]

Henman could volley better with a frying pan than Rodick does with his Pure Drive. He should work on this for Wimbledon. Even if he just got his volley game to a fair standard - he would increase his chances of a Wimby win....

[Ash Doyle]

Mardy Fish does good volleying with a 28" racquet.

[JohnThomas1]

It's funny, some matches Roddick volleys quite ok and others he's pitiful in. Might depend on the class he is against maybe. Haas certainly gave him nothing, but it is always tough to win points at the net on clay.

[guernica1]

Escude reportedly plays with what is close to an off the shelf PD+ and he has excellent volleys, but i think Andy's volley issues are not from his racket.

[@wright]

Roddick should just quit trying to improve his backhand and volleying, and just concentrate on his serve. If he can get 80% of his serves in, he'll win every time.

[Hawaii 5.0]

It's partially the racquet(less than 1/10th of 1%),especially with all the people already mentioned who volley well or excellent with longer frames, but mainly technique,mindset and confidence in his shot.I think if he thought he had a good volley and slightly better placement and strategy with his volley's he'd do a ton better with it.He has confidence in his serve and his fh usually and sometimes his bh, but almost never his volley unless it's a medium height,pace bh dtl.

[jun]

well roddick chokes up about 1 inch up. So it still is like playing with 27 inch racket

[crosscourt]

ok ok I only said "isn't helped", not that it was the whole thing -- to be more specific, the point they made was that they think that his troubles -- lack of confidence etc come in part from his inability to deal with volleys at his body, and that a long racket doesn't help with that.

[jings]

Todd Martin would be another to add to the list. Interestingly in some of the commentary in Asia on Roddick's semi-final match was that the opponent (sorry name of the Sth American escapes me) shouldn't try to hit winners past Roddick as he came to the net, but rather just make Roddick volley which almost certainly would result in an easier ball to pass with second time round. The point here is that Rod may be able to deal with the put aways simply enough, but the moment he needs to work a point at the net he's in trouble. The level of work required to get him to that level isn't probably worth the effort I reckon. Agassi has done well enough over the years with a limited net game. So, nice as it would be to see Roddick expand his repetoire, it's unlikely to happen to any significant degree imho.

[nyu]

Comparing Andre's ability to not need to come to the net with Andy's is comparing apples and oranges. Andre hits everything off the rise, and is almost always in the offensive because of it. He also hits a much flatter ball. Roddick on the other hand stands a few feet behind the baseline, so he has to work much harder to cause UE and hit winners. Roddick also doesn't have the ability to hit winners off of both sides the way Andre does.

Point is, Roddick needs to continue to improve his net game if he is going to want a run at #1. He already proved that when his volleys are solid, he can beat a really tough player(Safin at Indian Wells). In fact, Roddick's results lately have been directly correlated with his success at the net. He's evolving, it will take some time though. His volleys are already heads and tails above last year.

[Max G.]

...btw, it was Luis Horna who Roddick played in the semis.

And I agree, he should work on his volleys. They're not completely technically sound, yet; but they're bound to get there eventually. It's a question of whether they'll be good enough to take his game up that half a notch, back up to #1.

[Kobble]

He needs to get to at least Ivanisevic's level of volleys, so he can put away the floater returns. If doesn't get competent volleys he will always have to work harder than necessary to beat Federer, because Federer will just block it and attempt to play out the point.

[SonicSpeed]

Good points everyone.

[Anonymous]

Actually Agassi has much better technique on his volleys than Roddick, but doesn't have the serve to set them up like Andy does. I've seen Agassi hit some superb low volley and he certainly puts away floaters text book style. He didn't get to the semis of Wimbledon by volleying more.

FYI, PCMD, I've reported you to the site administrators. Your impersonation and harassment of me is beyond sad. LOL.

[SonicSpeed]

How do you know the impersonator is PCMD, though?

Originally Posted by SonicSpeed

How do you know the impersonator is PCMD, though?

Because we've had a few run-ins and I've managed to get under his skin.


But whether is was really him or not doesn't matter. The administrators took care of the impersonator, which is against board rules, btw. (thank you, admins)

[ProStaffTour90]

Totally agree with Kobble, there are so many easy points he misses out on where all his oppenent can do is float the ball back but he's planted on the baseline, when there should be an easy put away up at the net!