Greatest Serves of All Time

[pc1]

I really should be catching up on my readings but since I've wasted nearly a whole afternoon already....

1. Ivanisevic
2. Karlovic
3. Sampras
4. Gonzales
5. Krajicek
6. Arthurs
7. Roddick
8. Newcombe
9. Isner
10. McEnroe
11. Tanner
12. Becker
13. Philippoussis
14. Stich
15. Curren
16. Zivojinovic
17. Raonic
18. Rusedski
19. Federer
20. Noah

Honorary mentions:

McLoughlin, Maurice - perhaps the first distinguished cannonball serve in tennis history
Tilden - yet another storied power serve, which he bolstered with spin and accuracy
Vines - by all accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era
Kramer - in addition to a formidable first serve, perhaps the best second serve before Newcombe and Sampras
Denton - his unusual service motion notwithstanding, could bring enormous heat
Edberg - for his legendary kicker, arguably the best ever for serve-and-volley
Johansson, Joachim - Denton of the 2000s

As you can see I've added Zivojinovic, moved Curren up a notch and, as much as it pains me, dropped Noah all the way down to #20. I've been watching some Bobo clips lately and not only was Datacipher (who again has nothing to do with a certain current poster) right that the Serb probably had a bigger serve than Becker, I now see that he had a pretty damn good 2nd serve himself. Bobo might well move up further in my future updates, while Noah might drop out of the list altogether and just be given an honorary mention. And Curren continues to impress both in footage and in service stats.

Also one thing I've noticed about Mac is that his stats in '91 in '92 are actually pretty mediocre, showing just about 82% of service games won. Now we know that by this time Mac was way over the hill, but considering that a player's service game usually doesn't decline so sharply as his return game I do wonder if his reputation precedes the actual strength of his serve. If anyone's got his stats from his heyday (1984 most of all, but from before '86) please don't hesitate to share them with us.

And here are a few of the servers we have yet to investigate further (listed by order of birth):

Gerald Patterson (1895)
Yvon Petra (1916)
Geoff Brown (1924)
Bob Falkenburg (1926)
Mike Sangster (1940)
Frank Froehling (1942)
Stan Smith (1946)
John Alexander (1951)
John Feaver (1952)
Scott Carnahan (1953)
Chip Hooper [1958]

Again some of these names like Patterson and Falkenburg might be worth an honorary mention, and perhaps more recent ones like Smith and Hooper can be ranked somewhere. As always feel free to chime in preferably with stats, news reports and firsthand accounts if available. Much obliged!

P.S. From now on I'll try to update the OP as well so first-time visitors know what to expect.

This is a great thread and very well organized. As you know I disagree with some choices but given your reasoning I totally understand and applaud.

As far as McEnroe is concerned in 1984, I do have stats that indicate that he held serve well over 90% of the time that year and probably also led the ATP in percentage of breaking serve. My best guess is that he held serve about 95% of the time that year.

 

[NonP]

This is a great thread and very well organized. As you know I disagree with some choices but given your reasoning I totally understand and applaud.

As far as McEnroe is concerned in 1984, I do have stats that indicate that he held serve well over 90% of the time that year and probably also led the ATP in percentage of breaking serve. My best guess is that he held serve about 95% of the time that year.

Thanks pc1. I really think this may well be the single greatest thread in TW history. :twisted:

As for Mac, if he really did hold serve 95% of the time in '84 (doubtful, but not excluding the possibility) that's probably the sharpest drop I've seen from a player of his caliber in his service game. If you have his actual stats from '84 and other years I'll be most interested to see them.

 

[abmk]

This is a great thread and very well organized. As you know I disagree with some choices but given your reasoning I totally understand and applaud.

As far as McEnroe is concerned in 1984, I do have stats that indicate that he held serve well over 90% of the time that year and probably also led the ATP in percentage of breaking serve. My best guess is that he held serve about 95% of the time that year.

Karlovic had 94% max in an year -- that was with him facing far less top players than mac did in 84. I am skeptical that it would be 95%.

90%+ or - a slight margin would be my guess ....

 

[pc1]

Karlovic had 94% max in an year -- that was with him facing far less top players than mac did in 84. I am skeptical that it would be 95%.

90%+ or - a slight margin would be my guess ....

My friend, you could very well be correct however I have the stats and if he was at let's say 91% it would not make sense according to the stats I have, it would be almost mathematically inhuman. If it's lower I think it is about 93 or 94 percent. A percentage point or two means a lot at these high levels.

It's just an estimate but let's compromise and say he definitely held serve very well that year. Of course it doesn't take a genius for me to write that since he was 82-3 the whole year which is the Open Era record for winning percentage.

 

[BlueB]

I'm surprised that Mac is on so many people's lists...
Also, I really like that big Bobo is there!

 

[KG1965]

BlueB

The Mac serve was great, but was not at the level that of Tanner or Ivanisevic or Isner or Curren.

Serve Tanner or Ivanisevic or Isner or Curren, 10
Serve Supermac 9.

 

[pc1]

Thanks pc1. I really think this may well be the single greatest thread in TW history. :twisted:

As for Mac, if he really did hold serve 95% of the time in '84 (doubtful, but not excluding the possibility) that's probably the sharpest drop I've seen from a player of his caliber in his service game. If you have his actual stats from '84 and other years I'll be most interested to see them.

Could be the best thread. I like it a lot.

 

[kiki]

While Kramer and Newcombe scored less aces than Gonzales or Sampras, their serves have to be rated first class.Tilden and Vines, too.

 

[pc1]

While Kramer and Newcombe scored less aces than Gonzales or Sampras, their serves have to be rated first class.Tilden and Vines, too.

Just a general thought, it does bother me that Kramer is so forgotten nowadays, he truly was one of the greats of all time and in a 100 match series it's very possible he could beat anyone that ever lived.

Newcombe is also very underrated nowadays, while he wasn't generally in the class of a Laver he was able to win on all surfaces and I believe from the 1973 US Open to the end of the WCT season in 1974 that he was the best player in the world. As we all know Connors eventually was number one in 1974 with one of the great tennis years of all time but Newcombe was generally was considered to be number one the first half of 1974 with his domination of the WCT circuit and eventually winning the WCT title which was more prestigious than some of majors like the Australian Open.

Both were very similar type players but I think Kramer was just plain superior in most shots. Despite the greatness of Newcombe's serve I believe Kramer's serve both first and serve was a bit superior to Newcombe's. His volley was a bit better than Newcombe's and his backhand was more solid and powerfully hit. As great as Newcombe's forehand was, Kramer's forehand was superior and had possibly the best down the line forehand ever. He had a great sidespin forehand down the line approach shot that often pulled the player off the court leaving Kramer at the net to hit the easy volley into the court for a winner. He could hit the ball with tremendous power off the forehand, being timed at 107.8 miles per hour by the primitive speed measuring devices of the time. Pancho Gonzalez was timed a bit faster at 112.88 mph. Kramer also was considered by many including Gonzalez as one of the best baseliners that they had ever faced yet Kramer was most famous for his awesome serve and volley game.

Kramer was a player with really no major stroke weaknesses. There are very few like that. Clearly as I study his record at his peak he is clearly one of the top few great players ever.

 

[kiki]

Just a general thought, it does bother me that Kramer is so forgotten nowadays, he truly was one of the greats of all time and in a 100 match series it's very possible he could beat anyone that ever lived.

Newcombe is also very underrated nowadays, while he wasn't generally in the class of a Laver he was able to win on all surfaces and I believe from the 1973 US Open to the end of the WCT season in 1974 that he was the best player in the world. As we all know Connors eventually was number one in 1974 with one of the great tennis years of all time but Newcombe was generally was considered to be number one the first half of 1974 with his domination of the WCT circuit and eventually winning the WCT title which was more prestigious than some of majors like the Australian Open.

Both were very similar type players but I think Kramer was just plain superior in most shots. Despite the greatness of Newcombe's serve I believe Kramer's serve both first and serve was a bit superior to Newcombe's. His volley was a bit better than Newcombe's and his backhand was more solid and powerfully hit. As great as Newcombe's forehand was, Kramer's forehand was superior and had possibly the best down the line forehand ever. He had a great sidespin forehand down the line approach shot that often pulled the player off the court leaving Kramer at the net to hit the easy volley into the court for a winner. He could hit the ball with tremendous power off the forehand, being timed at 107.8 miles per hour by the primitive speed measuring devices of the time. Pancho Gonzalez was timed a bit faster at 112.88 mph. Kramer also was considered by many including Gonzalez as one of the best baseliners that they had ever faced yet Kramer was most famous for his awesome serve and volley game.

Kramer was a player with really no major stroke weaknesses. There are very few like that. Clearly as I study his record at his peak he is clearly one of the top few great players ever.

I know he is your boy

well, Kramer was a great player, no doubt, and his contribution to tennis history has been matched by very few players.

But the real underrated one here is Frank Sedgman.His serve was top class and he is considered one of the best ever volleyers.When he was playing well, this superfit and fast aussie made guys like Hoad and Gonzo feel miserable at times.Some records show that.

 

[krosero]

NonP, I've said it before, but great thread. I appreciate the emphasis on stats and on careful decision-making.

Vines - by all accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era

Some years ago I assembled a list of snippets from press accounts in 1939, describing Vines' serve in his matches that year. I'll put it here, in a separate post.

I made that list actually because I was debating Dan about whether Vines ever served under-hand, due to injury, in the '39 tours. Dan claimed he did. However, at the time of that debate, we did not have many newspaper reports at all from that year; and we didn't even know when, or by whom, the claim of under-hand serving was made. We have since learned that Vines himself said he served under-hand to Budge in 1939, in an interview in 1990. We have not found any reference to under-hand serving published before 1990.

And I've since assembled a match-by-match documentation of Vines' tours that year, showing great serving by Vines throughout the season, with no mention, even in the lengthiest articles from the time period, that Vines ever served under-hand.

To his great credit Dan, when I first posted the list of snippets describing Vines' serve that year, withdrew the claim of underhand serving. He has since said that Vines pulled a muscle in '39 which affected his serving -- and I agree with that; I think there's good evidence for it, though I still have many questions about it.

Sorry for the long explanation, and the last thing I want to do is derail the thread. The injury issue is a contentious one with a long backstory here, and I hardly want this great thread to become about that. If anyone wants to discuss that issue (or if you, NonP, want to say anything about it), some good threads for that might be the 1939 tour thread (http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=512828) or my thread about the difficult issues concering human memory (http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=524775).

Human memory, I think, is an issue that is impossible not to look at, when debating claims about long-ago events. But that is surely a HUGE issue that would sidetrack this thread.

Just wanted to give you the context in which the list of snippets (which I will post) was created. It was created to debate Vines' injury, not to describe Vines' serving in general -- but I've just realized that it serves that purpose perfectly well.

There is no doubt in my mind, whatsoever, that Vines was one of the greatest servers of all time. I had merely assumed it to be true, because that's his reputation; but now after my extensive research of his decade, I know it to be true.

 

[krosero]

Below, snippets from all matches in 1939 in which Vines' serving was described -- whether positive or negative descriptions.

All of these quotes are from newspaper or magazine reports in '39.


Jan 3 (New York), Vines served 5 aces

Jan 4 (Boston), Vines out-aced Budge 9-6

Jan 5 (Philadelphia), Vines “Scores With Fast Service”. Per ALT, “Budge found the service and forehand drive of Vines stronger and more accurate in this third meeting of the tour.” He out-aced Budge 9-2.

Jan 7 (Chicago), per ALT, “Never has Vines hit with greater power or with more uncanny accuracy. His service was an unleashed thunderbolt.... Time and again Budge stood helplessly by as Vines’ booming services rocketed by him.”

Jan 9 (Pittsburgh), “A capacity crowd of 6000 tennis fans at Duquesne Garden saw Budge break through Vines' cannonball service three times in the first set, while Vines twice cracked Budge's softer serve. Budge won the match with better control of his shots than was exhibited by Vines, as well as a superior net game that gave him point victory every time he went up. Vines hit much the harder ball on service and from the baseline.”

Jan 10 (Cincinnati), Vines “vicious service”

Jan 12 (Detroit), Vines out-aced Budge 9-1

Jan 14 (Minneapolis), Vines “working his ace service ball often”. Per ALT: “Trailing at 1-2 in the second Ellie won five straight games with an unbeatable streak that included five services aces...he left the 6,000 spectators, the largest in the history of Minneapolis tennis, with the feeling that nobody in the world could have stood up against his hitting that night.”

Jan 16 (Kansas City), “only Vines’ service did his bidding”

Jan 17 (St. Louis), Vines “found only his service working”

Jan. 19 (Cleveland), “Vines raised his game to spectacular heights to produce the best tennis of the match as his powerful serve began clipping the lines, enabling him to take the net against Budge’s soft returns and lay them away”

Jan. 20 (Buffalo), after the doubles Jack Castle compliments Vines on his serve: “I never saw anything like it. I knew it was fast, but when you lean on it, it just can’t be seen. Goodness gracious, Don can’t hit a ball the way you do.” Budge says, “It looks that way to me sometimes, too.” Vines led Budge 4-2 in aces.

Jan. 21 (Baltimore), Vines played poorly but “scored an ace now and then, Budge letting the sizzler go by”; he “rallied his service strokes in the sixth game to save a shutout, forcing two faulty returns of the first one and then rifling an ace past Budge”; out-aced Budge 2-0 (match only 15 games long)

Jan. 23 (College Park), “The victor’s placement was excellent and his service more than once too hot for the redheaded Californian to return.”

Jan. 24 (Richmond), “Many remarked, however, that at the rate Vines was whipping across his first serves on this night and gambling with abandon with drives that skimmed the net and cut the lines, little could have been done about it by the world’s greatest player, amateur or professional.”

Jan. 25 (Chapel Hill), Vines “shooting across ace services with set regularity”

Jan 29 (Miami Beach), Vines “won his sets on the service, which experts rate as the world’s best”

Feb. 1 (Everglades Club), Vines’ “cannonball service” was one of “the chief characteristics” of the match.

Feb 3 (Atlanta), Vines served 32 aces. “After breaking Budge’s service in the thirteenth game, Vines went after his prey like a hungry tiger and won the last game at love. Included in the last game were two of Ellsworth’s blistering service aces.”

Feb. 8 (Houston), “Budge outlasted Vines' cannon-ball service to win”

Feb. 9 (Dallas), Vines “won the eighth game at love when for the only time in the match he had his bullet service behaving in old-time style, taking the first three points on as many serves with aces”

Feb 12 (Los Angeles), Vines had “three flashing service aces” in one game near the end

Feb. 15 (San Francisco), “Vines’ cannonball service later forced the Oakland redhead into errors and he lost the set, 7-5.” Also: “Vines' terrific cannonball service proved the deciding factor of the twenty-eighth match of the series.”

Feb. 17 (Seattle), “Vines’ service was brilliant at times”

Feb. 20 (Oakland), “Vines won principally by managing to keep his cannon ball service under control for the first time in several matches.” And “his service almost tore the racket out of Budge's hand time and again—when it didn't pass him completely for an ace.”

Feb. 21 (San Jose), “Vines’ crash-service was too hot for Budge”

Feb 27 (Milwaukee), Vines out-aced Budge 13-1. “Vines’ booming service still as effective as ever”, had 3 aces in one game

Mar. 2 (Rochester), “Vines’ own service was not broken once as he outhit his powerful younger opponent.” Vines may have hit 22 aces in this match, or possibly later in Providence.

Mar 3 (Troy), Vines served 11 aces

Mar 4 (Providence), the crowd “thrilled at the steam of Vines’s service late in the second set when he put over several aces on his red-headed opponent.” The next day Budge told the press: "Elly’s big gun is his service. We’ve figured out that in every game he serves against me he wins a point and a half outright, on that cannonball! It’s terrific! He serves three or four aces to my one. But the other night when he walloped 22 aces against me in two sets he still had to go 7-5 and 8-6 to beat me!"

Mar 6 (Montreal, last match of U.S. tour), “Even Vines’ cannon-ball service failed to dent his rival’s armor, Budge breaking through the truly terrific delivery seven times”

March 27, doubles match in San Francisco, ending 12-10 in the fifth. Vines/Gledhill vs. Budge/Perry. Per the Auckland Star, the four men held serve at one stretch in the fifth for 16 consecutive games. "Throughout the match the crowd was thrilled by the cannon-ball serves of the ‘lanky’ Vines. He put over ten aces in his 16 games, clean beating Budge no less than seven times and Perry thrice. He also won four of his games at love."

April 2, Los Angeles, the same doubles pairs again. From 5-all to 18-19 in the fifth set, no one was broken.

May 16 at Wembley, Vines served 30-32 aces in a three-set win over Nusslein.

May 18 at Wembley, Vines made “wonderful serves” against Budge. Per the press, “He even ‘aced’ Budge with his service which seemed, if such a thing is humanly and mechanically possible, to be occasionally faster than Donald’s.”

May 20 at Wembley, Vines served “severely” in his loss to Tilden.

May 26 at Dublin: “Vines thrilled the large crowd with some glorious driving and serving” against Budge. “He held his own service games easily with terrific cannonball deliveries, while Budge had to fight deuce and vantage battles for most of his.” Vines’ service also “proved a useful weapon” in a close win over Stoefen.

May 29 at Cheltenham: “Vines’s cannon-ball service seemed to have lost none of its power, and this, combined with some superlative drives, kept him always ahead” of Budge.

June 1-3 at Southport: “Vines slammed his big service home time and again” throughout the three days, but in a win over Tilden he "was listless, his drives being erratic and his service faulty."

June 25 at Scheveningen, The Hague: “... that which Tilden, Vines, Budge, and Stoefen displayed, belongs indeed to the strongest tennis that one can think of. The most difficult shots were performed with miraculous ease, canon serves thundered within the lines and the sharpest volleys were fired.” Of the Budge/Vines meeting: “It was a fierce battle, in which the speed [power] of Vines initially triumphed over the fine touch of Budge.”

July 2 in RG final: per the AP, Vines’s “service was powerful but he failed to follow it up.”

July 21, Bristol: Vines had 16-18 unreturned serves in a 7-5, 6-1 win over Tilden (who had 10 himself). “The wooden court was often rendered treacherous by the rain, but completely failed to check a brilliant stream of terrific services, sizzling drives and crisp volleys from W. T. Tilden, J. Donald Budge, H. Ellsworth Vines, and Lester R. Stoefen.”

Aug. 4-5 at Southport: "Vines, suffering from a strained back, was unable to serve fast against Dan Maskell." The next day, "Vines was still deprived of his big service by back trouble and so he had perforce to play Nusslein at his own game. If there is one thing impossible it is to 'out Nusslein' Nusslein. He can only be beaten by being blasted off the court, and Vines without his heavy artillery cannot do that."

Aug. 15, Glasgow: “tremendous driving and cannon-ball services of Vines” against Tilden.

August 25, Edinburgh: “a crashing service” by Vines in the second set against Stoefen, though Vines was implied to serve poorly in the third.

Oct. 22, US Pro: Vines was reported to have a lame shoulder at this tournament but he “had too many cannonballs for Gorchakoff” in the quarterfinals, and he out-aced Perry 22-6 in the final. In a doubles semifinal Vines “was serving cannonballs” and “did not lose a service in the entire three long sets” (7-5, 10-8, 6-3).

 

[jrs]

Although, I've never seen Gonzales play - I would put him at the top of the list, due to the fact they tinkered with the rules to stop him from hitting his serves.

I think Ranoic should be moved up because he seems to have taken the serve to another level in his short time in the pros.

Tanner - serve was just amazing. Although, he only hit flats I think? But the pace with the wood racquet was amazing.

Also, some doubles players had amazing serves, Marcin Matawoski saw him play with Lindstedt - serve stopped me cold in my tracks. Don't know much about him.

 

[Moose Malloy]

NonP, here are those stats on Mac-Alexander. I didn't count what amount of unreturned serves that were 1st or 2nd.

1979 Davis Cup, McEnroe d Alexander 9-7, 6-2, 9-7

Mac 35 of 98 serves were unreturned(36%)

he won 87% of 1st serves
75.5% of 2nd serves
1 ace, 1 df
was unbroken

Alexander 39 of 128 serves were unreturned(30%)
he won 72.6% of 1st serves
43% of 2nd serves
4 aces, 4 df’s
was broken 4 times


more stats on Zivojinovic vs Connors at '87 Wimbledon

40 of 95 serves were unreturned(42%) - I miscalculated earlier when I wrote 44%

29 of his 60 1st serves were unreturned(48%)
9 of his 35 2nd serves were unreturned(26%)

25 aces, no doubles. broken twice

I've been watching some Bobo clips lately and not only was Datacipher (who again has nothing to do with a certain current poster) right that the Serb probably had a bigger serve than Becker, I now see that he had a pretty damn good 2nd serve himself. Bobo might well move up further in my future updates

One other thing about Bobo(which you probably already knew), he gave Wilander his toughest match at the '88 French Open(was up 5-2 in the 5th). I wonder if there are any articles that mention how many aces he had. Wish I could see it.

this is what Steve Flink wrote about the match in World Tennis:

"Bobo confounded Wilander by destroying his rhythm, making the favorite play short points, attacking as though he was playing on anything but a clay court. Bobo seemed certain to achieve a milestone triumph when her served for the match at 5-3 in the final set and came within 2 points of his goal. But when he could have moved to match point at 30-30, he failed to put away a high backhand first volley at close range, allowing the Swede back into the game."

 

[chrischris]

NonP, here are those stats on Mac-Alexander. I didn't count what amount of unreturned serves that were 1st or 2nd.

1979 Davis Cup, McEnroe d Alexander 9-7, 6-2, 9-7

Mac 35 of 98 serves were unreturned(36%)

he won 87% of 1st serves
75.5% of 2nd serves
1 ace, 1 df
was unbroken

Alexander 39 of 128 serves were unreturned(30%)
he won 72.6% of 1st serves
43% of 2nd serves
4 aces, 4 df’s
was broken 4 times


more stats on Zivojinovic vs Connors at '87 Wimbledon

40 of 95 serves were unreturned(42%) - I miscalculated earlier when I wrote 44%

29 of his 60 1st serves were unreturned(48%)
9 of his 35 2nd serves were unreturned(26%)

25 aces, no doubles. broken twice



One other thing about Bobo(which you probably already knew), he gave Wilander his toughest match at the '88 French Open(was up 5-2 in the 5th). I wonder if there are any articles that mention how many aces he had. Wish I could see it.

this is what Steve Flink wrote about the match in World Tennis:

"Bobo confounded Wilander by destroying his rhythm, making the favorite play short points, attacking as though he was playing on anything but a clay court. Bobo seemed certain to achieve a milestone triumph when her served for the match at 5-3 in the final set and came within 2 points of his goal. But when he could have moved to match point at 30-30, he failed to put away a high backhand first volley at close range, allowing the Swede back into the game."

John Alexander was a fine serve and volley player that could have done better , but his returns were quite mediocre. Mac did fully exploit that.

 

[pc1]

I know he is your boy

well, Kramer was a great player, no doubt, and his contribution to tennis history has been matched by very few players.

But the real underrated one here is Frank Sedgman.His serve was top class and he is considered one of the best ever volleyers.When he was playing well, this superfit and fast aussie made guys like Hoad and Gonzo feel miserable at times.Some records show that.

Kramer isn't one of my favorites but I respect his game and I do believe his serve is easily argued to be the best ever.

Yes Sedgman is very underrated as a player. I believe he is one of the best players ever, not GOAT status but tremendous. His volley is arguably the best ever.

 

[krosero]

NonP, here are those stats on Mac-Alexander. I didn't count what amount of unreturned serves that were 1st or 2nd.

1979 Davis Cup, McEnroe d Alexander 9-7, 6-2, 9-7

Mac 35 of 98 serves were unreturned(36%)

he won 87% of 1st serves
75.5% of 2nd serves
1 ace, 1 df
was unbroken

87% is one of the highest we've seen in our wood-era matches, but 76% on second serve is just incredible.

McEnroe's second serve was great at this time; I remember SI said after he lost to Borg at Wimbledon that he was hardly any less tough on second serve than on first.

He may not have been the #1 server in his prime (1979-84) but he may have had the best second serve.

btw 20 consecutive holds for Mac in this Alexander match.

 

[kiki]

in the 1979 WCT Finals at Dallas and the 1979 Milan Indoor WCT event, Mac also scored very clean looking wins over Alexander

Alexander, after being trashed at Dallas, said afterwards that " this guy is the very equal of Borg and Connors.Same stuff"

 

[RacquetAbuse101]

Kramer/Gonzalez/Sampras (Clutch servers)

Someone mentioned Forget. Not arguing, but it brought back a vivid memory
of McEnroe returning Forget`s serve with a perfect lob. (Wimbledon 92?)

 

[krosero]

A few service stats from a Vines-Perry match, possibly the earliest instance I've seen of a first-serve percentage calculated.

It was a match in New York's Madison Square Garden, on a fast indoor surface.
May 3, 1937
Vines d. Perry 7-5, 6-3, 6-3

American Lawn Tennis:

Vines’ superiority at the net in the singles against Perry is evidenced by relative figures on the performances of the two men in the fore court. There were times, of course, when forcing shots as they went in to the net brooked no effective reply but the number of times when each man was firmly entrenched near the barrier was: Vines 30, Perry 19. Vines’ backhand volley was particularly deadly, as he scored nine placements with it and erred only twice off it. On the forehand he had ten placements and five errors. Perry’s forehand volley was erratic, as he made only one good out of four. He reversed the percentage on his backhand, with three out of four being successful. The passing shots of the two men were equally efficacious: both scored on two out of four attempted passes. Only Vines resorted to lobbing, and with great accuracy. He sent Perry racing for the base line four times and caused him to smash into the net once; only one of Vines’ lobs went out and only one was smashed for a winner. Only 17 of the total of 49 advances to the net came in the long first set.

There is no doubt that Vines’ service, when working well, is a weapon that Perry cannot cope with on the fast indoor surface. There were a number of games when the ball was hardly put into play by Perry, so devastating were his opponent’s first serves, delivered either flat or with a modified American twist. It was in the second game of the match—when Vines failed to put a first ball in play—that Perry broke through for the only time in the match, and this enabled him to get to 3-0, having wasted only four out of fifteen first serves himself in the process.

It is interesting to note how service affected the trend of the match from that point on. For the next four games it had very little to do with the outcome, with Vines breaking through Perry for 3-4 largely by putting on pressure off the ground despite good serving by Perry. In the eighth game, however, Vines put the ball in play five times with his first ball: Perry’s ability to return two of them well was insufficient and he won just that many points. Two games later Vines was down set point as his first serve failed him, and then he uncorked three near-aces to pull himself out of trouble. This was a story that was to be repeated a number of times during the match. The eleventh game was very hard fought and for the first time in six years of watching Perry play, this observer made a pencil notation that the Englishman looked tired! Vines finally broke through and went out in the next with the aid of two clean aces and one near-ace.

Perry attempted to slow the pace at the start of the second set, but to little avail. Vines was in full cry by this time and it was not by virtue of his serve alone that he captured the set. Only in the fourth game and again after being in a tight spot at 4-3 did he serve devastatingly. His pulling out the latter left Perry very discouraged, so that the last game of the set was practically thrown to Vines.

The third set saw Vines pile up ace after ace, and yet he was not putting his first ball in with the regularity of Perry. In the long third game Vines was in difficulty after being foot faulted on a second service, but he held the game despite his poorest serving of the match. Perry, on the other hand, put his first ball in 12 out of 14 times in the sixth game and yet was broken through.

In the match as a whole, Vines made good 49 first serves out of 87 tries [56.3%]; Perry 88 out of 132 [66.7%]. These figures tell graphically how much more effective Vines’ first service was when it actually went in, and how much more difficult it was for Perry to hold his service games. Vines was credited with 18 aces (unreturnable rather than clean) and Perry with five. Vines served five double faults and Perry seven, large numbers for top-notch players. The two men had about an equal number of errors, but Vines’ placement score was just twice as big as Perry’s, 22 to 11.
​

Incidentally this match, in terms of net play, looks statistically like a typical Federer/Djokovic match. Vines was at net on 14% of all points played in the match, Perry on 9%. In a sample of 20 Fed/Djok matches, I've got Federer at net on 13% of all points, Djokovic on 9% (some of those stats are posted at http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?p=7718228#post7718228).

 

[NonP]

Before I start my long-overdue update, thanks to all for the new stats and suggestions. I know I've been saying this forever but I do keep track of all the little-known service stats posted here (and elsewhere as I come across them) and plan to present them in a readable format eventually.

Also some of you might have noticed my recent treatises on many of the topics already covered here: the steady increases in just about every major service stat (1st-serve %, % of service games won, etc.) among top players since the '90s and the reasons behind them, why we should be wary of direct comparisons of service (and return) stats between the recent decades as a result, the relationship between service and return games, the useful if obscure metric of % of unreturned serves (that is, those that the returner fails to put back in play), and of course some of the GSOAT rankings themselves. Most of them are posted on the "Better Server on Grass: Federer or Sampras?" thread and you can follow the 1st link to brush up on these topics or keep going if you have the time and patience to read through everything (well worthwhile, and I don't say that just because I wrote them).

OK, time for the list:

1. Ivanisevic
2. Karlovic
3. Sampras
4. Gonzales
5. Krajicek
6. Arthurs
7. Roddick
8. Newcombe
9. Isner
10. McEnroe
11. Tanner
12. Becker
13. Philippoussis
14. Stich
15. Curren
16. Zivojinovic
17. Raonic
18. Federer
19. Rusedski
20. Noah

Honorary mentions:

McLoughlin, Maurice - perhaps the first distinguished cannonball serve in tennis history
Tilden - yet another storied power serve, which he bolstered with spin and accuracy
Vines - by all accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era
Kramer - in addition to a formidable first serve, perhaps the best second serve before Newcombe and Sampras
Denton - his unusual service motion notwithstanding, could bring enormous heat
Edberg - for his legendary kicker, arguably the best ever for serve-and-volley
Johansson, Joachim - Denton of the 2000s

Like many I've been quite impressed by Fed's recent serving streak, enough to put him ahead of Rusedski now (stats be damned). That said I'm somewhat perplexed that we have yet to come across a single match (among the 14 that I have for Fed, unless I've missed a few) where a server of his caliber had more than 50% of his serves unreturned. In fact the highest rate that I see comes way back from his lone match against Pete at '01 Wimby, standing just below 50% at 49.2%. Does anyone have a better %? You may have seen this already but for reference below is his # of aces per service game and per match by year:

2001 - .585/7.5
2002 - .556/6.3
2003 - .638/7.3
2004 - .609/7.0
2005 - .548/7.0
2006 - .534/6.8
2007 - .615/7.8
2008 - .673/8.6
2009 - .651/9.0
2010 - .671/8.4
2011 - .558/6.6
2012 - .638/8.3
2013 - .503/6.4
2014 - .617/8.0

Now provided that his % of unreturned serves more or less has corresponded with his ace frequency his highest %s would likely come from '08-'10, the best 3-year serving stretch of his career. So far I have just 3 matches from this period, the one with the highest rate being the classic '09 Wimby final where Fed scored 44.7% of his serves as freebies against Rodddick. So maybe ace frequency isn't so helpful here after all. Anyway let me know if you've got any new stats for Fed or anyone else.

And here are a few names we still need to investigate further (listed by order of birth):

Gerald Patterson (1895)
Bob Falkenburg (1926)
Mike Sangster (1940)
Stan Smith (1946)
John Feaver (1952)

As you may have noticed, and unfair as it may be, I've removed Yvon Petra, Geoff Brown, Frank Froehling and Chip Hooper from the list (not for the 1st time in Hooper's case, I believe) simply because I just couldn't find enough helpful info about their serving prowess. And John Alexander and Scott Carnahan are also out because what I've seen so far isn't enough to convince me they belong with the best of the best (Carnahan might have won the fastest-serve competition once, but obviously we're looking for something more than that).

Again old-timers like Patterson or Falkenburg might be worth an honorary mention, and longtime posters should know I've been meaning to rank Smith for quite a while now. You know the drill: stats, press reports and firsthand accounts if available. As always much obliged!

And now one more thing....

NonP, I've said it before, but great thread. I appreciate the emphasis on stats and on careful decision-making.

(Much belated) thanks, krosero. And don't worry at all about "sidetracking" this thread! Anything that keeps it on page 1 is fine by me.

But seriously, I've never understood why it's necessary to remain strictly on topic all the time. Discussions are bound to veer off course eventually, and if you recall we had one (very lengthy) tangential discussion here on this very thread about Agassi vs. Chang as a returner and the dichotomy between return and return game in general. I think most people who followed it would agree that it was anything but a useless tangent to the main topic, and I don't see why discussions of Vines' storied serve or the fallibility of human memory with respect to his or other players' injuries would be any different.

And even if the "sideshows" had nothing to do with the topic I still wouldn't mind as long as they're done in a fun and chivalrous spirit. Like many posters I had issues with BobbyOne (bless his heart), but I did enjoy discussing music with him (though I might add that it began as a result of his characteristic refusal to budge on a simple factual matter...) and still remember our exchanges from that time fondly. And I'd hate to begrudge the same pleasure of banter on this or any other thread.

To his great credit Dan, when I first posted the list of snippets describing Vines' serve that year, withdrew the claim of underhand serving. He has since said that Vines pulled a muscle in '39 which affected his serving -- and I agree with that; I think there's good evidence for it, though I still have many questions about it.

This may well be the only time I've seen Dan admit his error on anything. Can you provide a link? (I'm only half joking, BTW.)

There is no doubt in my mind, whatsoever, that Vines was one of the greatest servers of all time. I had merely assumed it to be true, because that's his reputation; but now after my extensive research of his decade, I know it to be true.

Yes, I've been following your posts on Vines and I do think he's up there with Gonzales and maybe Kramer as one of the indisputable pre-Open era GSOAT candidates. Like I said I might as well add him to the list altogether along with Gonzales eventually, though at the same time I don't want to open the Pandora's box so to speak and rely so much on guesstimates for every old-timer. As you can see I'm rather torn on this one. We'll see.

 

[AngryBirds]

I really should be catching up on my readings but since I've wasted nearly a whole afternoon already....

1. Ivanisevic
2. Karlovic
3. Sampras
4. Gonzales
5. Krajicek
6. Arthurs
7. Roddick
8. Newcombe
9. Isner
10. McEnroe
11. Tanner
12. Becker
13. Philippoussis
14. Stich
15. Curren
16. Zivojinovic
17. Raonic
18. Rusedski
19. Federer
20. Noah

Honorary mentions:

McLoughlin, Maurice - perhaps the first distinguished cannonball serve in tennis history
Tilden - yet another storied power serve, which he bolstered with spin and accuracy
Vines - by all accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era
Kramer - in addition to a formidable first serve, perhaps the best second serve before Newcombe and Sampras
Denton - his unusual service motion notwithstanding, could bring enormous heat
Edberg - for his legendary kicker, arguably the best ever for serve-and-volley
Johansson, Joachim - Denton of the 2000s

As you can see I've added Zivojinovic, moved Curren up a notch and, as much as it pains me, dropped Noah all the way down to #20. I've been watching some Bobo clips lately and not only was Datacipher (who again has nothing to do with a certain current poster) right that the Serb probably had a bigger serve than Becker, I now see that he had a pretty damn good 2nd serve himself. Bobo might well move up further in my future updates, while Noah might drop out of the list altogether and just be given an honorary mention. And Curren continues to impress both in footage and in service stats.

Also one thing I've noticed about Mac is that his stats in '91 in '92 are actually pretty mediocre, showing just about 82% of service games won. Now we know that by this time Mac was way over the hill, but considering that a player's service game usually doesn't decline so sharply as his return game I do wonder if his reputation precedes the actual strength of his serve. If anyone's got his stats from his heyday (1984 most of all, but from before '86) please don't hesitate to share them with us.

And here are a few of the servers we have yet to investigate further (listed by order of birth):

Gerald Patterson (1895)
Yvon Petra (1916)
Geoff Brown (1924)
Bob Falkenburg (1926)
Mike Sangster (1940)
Frank Froehling (1942)
Stan Smith (1946)
John Alexander (1951)
John Feaver (1952)
Scott Carnahan (1953)
Chip Hooper [1958]

Again some of these names like Patterson and Falkenburg might be worth an honorary mention, and perhaps more recent ones like Smith and Hooper can be ranked somewhere. As always feel free to chime in preferably with stats, news reports and firsthand accounts if available. Much obliged!

P.S. From now on I'll try to update the OP as well so first-time visitors know what to expect.

Switch Sampras and Ivanisevic and you have a good list.

 

[timnz]

The biggest serve I ever saw in person (and I have seen Becker and Stich in person) was David Pate. Most wouldn't have heard of him but I saw him play in an exhibition in Auckland in late 1987. Just enormous. I couldn't imagine anyone today consistently returning it.

 

[krosero]

People like to look at ace counts for serve comparisons and indeed the likes of Ivo, Goran and Raonic often post ridiculous numbers in this department. What they don't look at, though, and a better measure of serving prowess, is the % of serves that their opponents fail to put back in play.

I don't know why this idea is not more widespread. I've recently found it in a remarkable article from 1933, in American Lawn Tennis. This is worth excerpting in its entirety.

The Scoring of Services

By HERBERT MANCHESTER

THERE must be something wrong in the scoring of service aces in lawn tennis. We watch Vines serve wonderfully throughout a championship match and the next morning, when we look at the paper, we find him credited with only half a dozen aces for the whole contest.

On the other hand we go to a ball game and watch three balls go through the third baseman, but in the morning we find the paper charging him with no errors and scoring all three balls as hits.

The difference is that in lawn tennis the papers seem to score aces only on balls that the receiver cannot get his racket on, or cannot possibly return, while in baseball the official scorer credits the batter with a hit, even though the ball goes right to the fielder, if it seems too hot to be handled or bounds badly. He always gives the batter the benefit of the doubt. In short, the baseball scorers seem too lenient and the tennis scorers too strict.

As scored at present, the aces alone are too few to show the strength of a service. Its effectiveness is brought out more exactly by the number of services not returned by the opponent. Unless he is deliberately throwing a game the receiver tries at least to get the service back, though he may attempt to do more with it than he can. So the proportion of services unreturned is a pretty fair index of their efficacy.

It was felt by almost everybody at the final of the 1932 American championship that Vines, after he got started, was serving remarkably well, yet he was credited with only six aces in the three sets, and Cochet was given none at all.

As a basis for writing up the match I kept a record of the last two shots of each point. This discloses that Vines, in addition to making seven aces, as I scored them, also sent over nine other serves that Cochet did not return. This is a little more than a point off service for each of the games Vines served, which is more like the impression received at the match.

I credited Cochet with only one ace, but with eleven other serves that Vines did not send back. This makes one understand that Cochet’s service is effective in scoring points, if not in making aces. Also, that the scoring of a lone ace fails utterly to bring out the potency of the serve.

In his 75-game semi-final against Sutter, I recorded 15 aces for Vines, and 32 other services which Sutter did not recover, in most cases for good reason.

I gave Sutter credit for only three aces, but also for 35 serves that Vines failed to get back. Some of these failures were inexcusable errors, but the total of only three aces against nearly twelve times as many other points off service entirely misrepresents the effectiveness of Sutter’s delivery.

In the other semi-final Allison, in the 60 games played, made 12 aces and 27 other serves which Cochet did not keep in play, while Cochet sent over seven aces and 24 unreturned serves, or just about one to a service game. Here again the seven aces are no fair criterion of the strength of Cochet’s service.

For the sake of comparison, the corresponding records of the two previous years are highly interesting. In the 1931 final of 53 games against Lott, Vines was credited on my record with ten aces and 30 other points off service, and Lott with nine aces and 33 other deliveries that Vines failed to put back into play. This bears out my impression at the time that Lott was serving well all through the match.

In his 1931 semi-final against Perry, Vines made 13 aces and 43 other points off his service, or 2 1/3 to each of his 24 service games. I counted only four aces and 14 other unreturned deliveries for Perry, according to which Vines made three times as many points off service as Perry did.

The 1930 final between Doeg and Shields was a battle of great services. Doeg had 13 aces and 48 other unreturned services in the 33 games he served, while Shields made 21 aces and 35 other points off service in his 32 service games. This approached two service points to a game for Doeg, and not much less for Shields. Out of the 396 points in the match, 127 were made off service, which is a remarkably high percentage.

Another great bombardment of services was in Doeg’s 1930 semi-final against Tilden. In the 57 [58] games, I recorded 31 aces and 29 other unreturned serves for Doeg, and 19 aces for Tilden, besides 49 other points off his deliveries. This averages more than two service points to a game for each player, which is the highest of any of the contests mentioned. Out of the 357 points in the match, 128 were made off service, which is more than a third and indicates the great effectiveness of the deliveries.

When the serve may play so great a part in the game it seems as if we need more of a record on service than the aces as scored by the present method. The scoring of services unreturned by opponents helps out, because they are definite in number, not subject to personal judgment; they bear a close relation to what the server is trying to accomplish; and they are frequent enough not to be accidental, and to give an idea of the effectiveness of the service.​

I'd never heard of Herbert Manchester. This is unique work; I had never seen unreturned serves calculated this early, or to this degree. If he produced these stats regularly then we can hope, eventually, to have a reliable statistical picture of serving in past eras. If you or anyone else comes across more please do let me know.

All of the above stats are divided by number of games; but I have the point scores for all those matches, so I've been able to divide the unreturned serves by the number of points served, as we've been doing for the modern matches. I'll put the list in a separate post.

 

[krosero]

All of these matches, listed by Herbert Manchester above, took place at Forest Hills on grass.

1932 US final
Vines served 92 points, and 16 serves did not come back: 17.4%
Cochet served 88 points, and 12 serves did not come back: 13.6%

Vines held in 12 of 15 games (80.0%)
Cochet held in 9 of 15 games (60.0%)​

1932 US semifinal
Vines served 233 points, and 47 serves did not come back: 20.2%
Sutter served 241 points, and 38 serves did not come back: 15.8%

Vines held in 26 of 37 games (70.3%)
Sutter held in 24 of 38 games (63.2%)​

1932 US semifinal
Cochet served 207 points, and 31 serves did not come back: 15.0%
Allison served 198 points, and 39 serves did not come back: 19.7%

Cochet held in 23 of 30 games (76.7%)
Allison held in 20 of 30 games (66.7%)​

1931 US final
Vines served 168 points, and 40 serves did not come back: 23.8%
Lott served 168 points, and 42 serves did not come back: 25.0%

Vines held in 22 of 27 games (81.4%)
Lott held in 19 of 26 games (73.1%)​

1931 US semifinal
Vines served 157 points, and 56 serves did not come back: 35.7%
Perry served 132 points, and 18 serves did not come back: 13.6%

Vines held in 19 of 24 games (79.2%)
Perry held in 18 of 24 games (75.0%)​

1930 US final
Doeg served 206 points, and 61 serves did not come back: 29.6%
Shields served 190 points, and 56 serves did not come back: 29.4%

Doeg held in 28 of 33 games (84.8%)
Shields held in 27 of 32 games (84.4%)​

1930 US semifinal
Doeg served 175 points, and 60 serves did not come back: 34.3%
Tilden served 182 points, and 68 serves did not come back: 37.4%

Doeg held in 27 of 29 games (93.1%)
Tilden held in 25 of 29 games (86.2%)​

Just for you, NonP, I've included the hold rates, just as a snapshot of what that stat looked like in this era, in the late rounds of a major.

 

[NonP]

The biggest serve I ever saw in person (and I have seen Becker and Stich in person) was David Pate. Most wouldn't have heard of him but I saw him play in an exhibition in Auckland in late 1987. Just enormous. I couldn't imagine anyone today consistently returning it.

Pate might well have been a first-rate server but as you may know he was a mere 6-footer. So unless he was a true anomaly like Sampras, Roddick or Tanner I'm rather doubtful he was among the best of the best (which, BTW, is what this thread is mainly about).

Just for you, NonP, I've included the hold rates, just as a snapshot of what that stat looked like in this era, in the late rounds of a major.

Thanks again krosero. Yes, I too find it quite remarkable that Mr. Manchester was making the same argument as slice serve ace, I and the rest of a tiny minority have been making, only in this case nearly a century ago... when modern tennis was coming into its own as we know it today! It's a shame that his ideas didn't take root at that critical juncture of the sport, otherwise we'd all be better off now with a more nuanced understanding of the role a player's serve plays in his game. I'm sure you've stumbled on a few instances where an impressionable poster makes silly claims like how Federer or even Sampras would almost never lose a match if he had a serve like Karlovic's, although the stats clearly show that Ivo in fact doesn't win a much higher % of his serves as outright freebies (of course % of unreturned serves is quite useful here) and that the difference between him and either of the two GOATs is not their serves but their returns*.

*As I've said on the other thread this is a crude simplification, but my guess is that the difference between top 100-200 and top 30-40 lies in the serve, while the difference between top 30-40 and top 10 lies in the return. That is, a great serve will produce almost immediate results until you're in the top 30-40 or till you're able to win about 75% of your service games with ease, after which you will see markedly diminishing returns on your serve and to move further up your return game will need to take care of the rest. Taking all this into account it's no surprise that Karlovic and Isner, both of whom struggle to post double digits in % of return games won, have found it hard to crack the top 10 in rankings (though John did have a brief stint inside the club). The mistake most people make is this attractive but faulty assumption that the effect of Ivo's or John's serve on his service game is more or less directly proportional, whereas the likelihood is that this proportionality is far from constant especially after that point where they're now competing against the very best opponents (and presumably returners).

As for those stats, it seems quite clear that servers then were winning nowhere near the same %s they are now especially on grass, both in pure free points and in service games. Still Vines continues to reinforce his image as perhaps the premier server of his time. And I'm also impressed by Doeg's %s, which in fact compare quite favorably to Vines' (though Tilden did win a slightly higher % of freebies in his '30 SF meeting with Doeg). I know Doeg's name has come up before and if more of his stats turn out to be just as impressive maybe we should give him an honorable mention as well.

 

[krosero]

It's a shame that his ideas didn't take root at that critical juncture of the sport, otherwise we'd all be better off now with a more nuanced understanding of the role a player's serve plays in his game.

I could not agree more.

*As I've said on the other thread this is a crude simplification, but my guess is that the difference between top 100-200 and top 30-40 lies in the serve, while the difference between top 30-40 and top 10 lies in the return. That is, a great serve will produce almost immediate results until you're in the top 30-40 or till you're able to win about 75% of your service games with ease, after which you will see markedly diminishing returns on your serve and to move further up your return game will need to take care of the rest. Taking all this into account it's no surprise that Karlovic and Isner, both of whom struggle to post double digits in % of return games won, have found it hard to crack the top 10 in rankings (though John did have a brief stint inside the club). The mistake most people make is this attractive but faulty assumption that the effect of Ivo's or John's serve on his service game is more or less directly proportional, whereas the likelihood is that this proportionality is far from constant especially after that point where they're now competing against the very best opponents (and presumably returners).

It's an interesting idea. Makes sense that the vital difference between top servers is in their return games. And as you've noted, that's where you find the signs of decline in Sampras, Federer, etc., in the return game.

As for those stats, it seems quite clear that servers then were winning nowhere near the same %s they are now especially on grass, both in pure free points and in service games. Still Vines continues to reinforce his image as perhaps the premier server of his time. And I'm also impressed by Doeg's %s, which in fact compare quite favorably to Vines' (though Tilden did win a slightly higher % of freebies in his '30 SF meeting with Doeg). I know Doeg's name has come up before and if more of his stats turn out to be just as impressive maybe we should give him an honorable mention as well.

Tilden's unreturned rate was the highest of all in that sample, though that was probably due to the lower quality of Doeg's return game.

Doeg was a left-hander who was sometimes named as the best server of his time, so a little like Ivanisevic (who also won just one major).

American Lawn Tennis compared the services of Vines, Tilden and Doeg (November 1932):

Three Services

THAT Tilden’s service, his “cannon ball,” was even faster than Vines’ delivery is the opinion of Henri Cochet, the reason being that Bill’s shot was hit perfectly flat while “Ell’s” carries spin. The man who is called upon to receive these expresses is the best judge, of course, and Cochet’s opinion is valuable for a number of reasons.

We are able, thanks to the Frenchman’s conclusions, to study the deliveries of three great servers of the past few years—Tilden, Vines and Doeg. Opinions will vary as to their comparative effectiveness as well as some of their other qualities. Certainly no one will deny that in their services the three players named possessed assets of tremendous value. It would be of great interest to obtain opinions of the varying degree of game winning value possessed by each.

There was this difference between the three men: Doeg’s service was his chief weapon, and once he had broken through an opponent he was thought to be certain of winning that set. With Tilden and Vines the service was only one of many weapons, and it was employed intermittently and sometimes kept in reserve for time of need. Another peculiarity is that Tilden was able to produce his cannon ball in the beginning of a match, while Vines appears to need considerable play before he can bring this gun into action effectively—and the further the match goes the more devastating and frequent it is.​

The descriptions of Vines sometimes remind me of Sampras: fully capable of great speed on his serve, but not necessarily an ace-machine, because his serve had some spin. And both very clutch.

 

[pc1]

I could not agree more.

It's an interesting idea. Makes sense that the vital difference between top servers is in their return games. And as you've noted, that's where you find the signs of decline in Sampras, Federer, etc., in the return game.

Tilden's unreturned rate was the highest of all in that sample, though that was probably due to the lower quality of Doeg's return game.

Doeg was a left-hander who was sometimes named as the best server of his time, so a little like Ivanisevic (who also won just one major).

American Lawn Tennis compared the services of Vines, Tilden and Doeg (November 1932):

Three Services

THAT Tilden’s service, his “cannon ball,” was even faster than Vines’ delivery is the opinion of Henri Cochet, the reason being that Bill’s shot was hit perfectly flat while “Ell’s” carries spin. The man who is called upon to receive these expresses is the best judge, of course, and Cochet’s opinion is valuable for a number of reasons.

We are able, thanks to the Frenchman’s conclusions, to study the deliveries of three great servers of the past few years—Tilden, Vines and Doeg. Opinions will vary as to their comparative effectiveness as well as some of their other qualities. Certainly no one will deny that in their services the three players named possessed assets of tremendous value. It would be of great interest to obtain opinions of the varying degree of game winning value possessed by each.

There was this difference between the three men: Doeg’s service was his chief weapon, and once he had broken through an opponent he was thought to be certain of winning that set. With Tilden and Vines the service was only one of many weapons, and it was employed intermittently and sometimes kept in reserve for time of need. Another peculiarity is that Tilden was able to produce his cannon ball in the beginning of a match, while Vines appears to need considerable play before he can bring this gun into action effectively—and the further the match goes the more devastating and frequent it is.​

The descriptions of Vines sometimes remind me of Sampras: fully capable of great speed on his serve, but not necessarily an ace-machine, because his serve had some spin. And both very clutch.

Didn't Vines compare himself to Sampras as far as serve is concerned?

 

[NonP]

Tilden's unreturned rate was the highest of all in that sample, though that was probably due to the lower quality of Doeg's return game.

Probably, yes, and in fact early on this thread pc1 had this choice passage from Budge's memoir:

Many old timers used to raved about a lefty server named John Doeg, who won the US Championship from what they say mainly on his almost unbreakable serve. I think Don Budge said the players called it John Doeg's egg ball because the ball resembled an egg when it came off his racket. Here's what Budge said about it in his ball "Don Budge-A Tennis Memoir"--The players referred to it as "John's egg-ball." Besides, when Doeg's serve in the ad court bounced, it would fly crazily off to the side, and no man could chase it down. If you did manage to get the ball back, just reaching the return carried you so far out of the court that there was no chance you could make it back in time to get Doeg's return. However, since John had little more proclivity for return serve than losing serve, all his matches were forever running to 18-16. You never broke Doeg's serve. You outlasted it.

Obviously Don's assessment is a bit of an exaggeration, as I pointed out to pc1 later (though I failed to see at the time just how esteemed Doeg's serve was among his contemporaries) and as is shown by the stats you yourself posted, but probably not an outrageous one.

Doeg was a left-hander who was sometimes named as the best server of his time, so a little like Ivanisevic (who also won just one major).

It's an apt analogy, but speaking of which do you know how tall Doeg was? I've done a fair amount of searching but all I could find is simply that he was a tall guy (which probably explains why his height is not listed in his Wikipedia article), and I'm wondering if he was Ivanisevic tall. It'd be great if you could provide a reference, and perhaps we can add this info to his Wiki entry.

(And pc1, if we do add to Doeg's Wiki article I'll probably hound you again for more info, 'cause we'll need the page number for that Budge quotation. )

The descriptions of Vines sometimes remind me of Sampras: fully capable of great speed on his serve, but not necessarily an ace-machine, because his serve had some spin. And both very clutch.

Yes, I've made the Vines-Sampras comparison myself. I don't know if I've divulged this impression of mine on this board, but remember what Kramer said about Budge being the best player day in and day out but Vines having the highest peak? That's pretty much how I feel about Federer vs. Sampras.

Also that American Lawn Tennis article tells me Doeg was very much in Tilden and Vines' league as the very best servers of their era. I'm definitely leaning towards giving John an honorable mention now. A few more impressive stats or accounts and his name should show up in my next update.

P.S. Where are you getting these ALT articles from? I can see them pop up in occasional Google searches but I'm wondering if there's a database where I can readily access all or at least most of them.

 

[krosero]

Didn't Vines compare himself to Sampras as far as serve is concerned?

Yes, in 1990 Vines told the LA Times: "When I saw Sampras serve in the U.S. Open final, I saw myself. Same speed. Feet on the ground. Never jumped. Didn't grunt. The same way I used to serve, absolutely. I got a kick out of seeing him play."

It's an apt analogy, but speaking of which do you know how tall Doeg was? I've done a fair amount of searching but all I could find is simply that he was a tall guy (which probably explains why his height is not listed in his Wikipedia article), and I'm wondering if he was Ivanisevic tall. It'd be great if you could provide a reference, and perhaps we can add this info to his Wiki entry.

(And pc1, if we do add to Doeg's Wiki article I'll probably hound you again for more info, 'cause we'll need the page number for that Budge quotation. )

ALT published a list of "Details About Players" in its edition of Sept. 5, 1932. For Doeg they have: 6' 1", 172 lbs, racket weight 13 1/4 oz.

For Vines, 6' 2 1/4", 160 lbs, racket 13 1/2 to 13 3/4 oz.

Yes, I've made the Vines-Sampras comparison myself. I don't know if I've divulged this impression of mine on this board, but remember what Kramer said about Budge being the best player day in and day out but Vines having the highest peak? That's pretty much how I feel about Federer vs. Sampras.

I haven't seen you post it, but it's interesting. You could be right.

One caveat is that Vines was regarded as an extremely flat hitter, even in his own time. That was thought to be the reason for the great difference between his best and his worst days -- the low margin of error. He'd miss by inches, they'd say; but on days when all his shots found the lines, he'd be impossible to beat.

He could rally, but the margin of error on his shots was always described as razor-thin, which is a big difference with Sampras, I think.

However, all indications are that Budge was a flatter hitter than Federer, too, so maybe it all evens out.

Impossible to know anything with certainty, so long as we don't have video. But I like the analogy.

Also that American Lawn Tennis article tells me Doeg was very much in Tilden and Vines' league as the very best servers of their era. I'm definitely leaning towards giving John an honorable mention now. A few more impressive stats or accounts and his name should show up in my next update.

Other than what I've posted, I have only the hold rate from the 1931 Longwood final, on grass, Vines d. Doeg in five sets:

Vines held in 19 of 23 games: hold rate 82.6%
Doeg held in 17 of 23 games: hold rate 73.9%

P.S. Where are you getting these ALT articles from? I can see them pop up in occasional Google searches but I'm wondering if there's a database where I can readily access all or at least most of them.

The old-fashioned way, with a library card. I hope eventually ALT's archives are put somewhere online. Some of the early issues, published in book form, are available at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=l...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

I've also found a couple of issues for sale at Amazon but that's rare.

 

[NonP]

ALT published a list of "Details About Players" in its edition of Sept. 5, 1932. For Doeg they have: 6' 1", 172 lbs, racket weight 13 1/4 oz.

Grazie. Thought I'd read 6' 1" somewhere but wanted to confirm with something official. Speaking of which do you have other details on the ALT list? I'm not sure what kind of documentation Wiki requires these days but I'd guess we might want to add the page and also volume and issue numbers. I'll see if I can get the same details from pc1 about the Budge memoir so we can add both bits of info.

One caveat is that Vines was regarded as an extremely flat hitter, even in his own time. That was thought to be the reason for the great difference between his best and his worst days -- the low margin of error. He'd miss by inches, they'd say; but on days when all his shots found the lines, he'd be impossible to beat.

He could rally, but the margin of error on his shots was always described as razor-thin, which is a big difference with Sampras, I think.

However, all indications are that Budge was a flatter hitter than Federer, too, so maybe it all evens out.

I forgot to add that Vines was probably even more erratic than Sampras, but I don't think there's much question that the more recent players hit with more spin than the old-timers ever did on the average, largely because of the limitations of racquet technology the latter were subjected to at the time. That's one of the reasons why we shouldn't take old accounts like that Budge quotation too literally (the other main reasons being the fallibility of human memory and plain old bias), because their idea of flat hitting may not match the one currently in vogue. But then perhaps it's our current standards that are historical anomalies and it's we know-it-alls who are trying to see things through our own warped lens. I don't think one can answer this question until he/she's actually seen and studied a significant number of the old matches in full, and it's safe to say there are few if any qualified experts that can claim such exhaustive scholarship.

Other than what I've posted, I have only the hold rate from the 1931 Longwood final, on grass, Vines d. Doeg in five sets:

Vines held in 19 of 23 games: hold rate 82.6%
Doeg held in 17 of 23 games: hold rate 73.9%

So Doeg wasn't unbreakable after all. We'll see if this was a bad hair day or par for the course for John.

The old-fashioned way, with a library card. I hope eventually ALT's archives are put somewhere online. Some of the early issues, published in book form, are available at Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=l...ce=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

I see. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way! Though I don't go to library much anymore I'm still glad to see them and would hate to see them disappear. I'm generally skeptical of public funding of anything but it's still sad to see our dear leaders try to cut corners in such modest investments as public libraries, radio and television (as you may well know PBS and NPR have been perennial political footballs for ages now) when the valuable and invaluable benefits we derive from them probably far outweigh their monetary costs. And even in this age of the Internet, Barnes & Nobles and Starbucks I expect libraries to continue to play a unique role for a long time. For example why don't they figure out ways to help Google achieve its goal of archiving everything so people can access such valuable resources as ATL?

Of course that's not the only challenge libraries face that they can turn into a plus. If you're interested Director of the Center for Media and Citizenship Siva Vaidhyanathan recently shared his thoughts on how the new Librarian of Congress can help his or her institution become relevant again:

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._great_librarian_to_replace_james.single.html

 

[krosero]

Grazie. Thought I'd read 6' 1" somewhere but wanted to confirm with something official. Speaking of which do you have other details on the ALT list? I'm not sure what kind of documentation Wiki requires these days but I'd guess we might want to add the page and also volume and issue numbers. I'll see if I can get the same details from pc1 about the Budge memoir so we can add both bits of info.



I forgot to add that Vines was probably even more erratic than Sampras, but I don't think there's much question that the more recent players hit with more spin than the old-timers ever did on the average, largely because of the limitations of racquet technology the latter were subjected to at the time. That's one of the reasons why we shouldn't take old accounts like that Budge quotation too literally (the other main reasons being the fallibility of human memory and plain old bias), because their idea of flat hitting may not match the one currently in vogue. But then perhaps it's our current standards that are historical anomalies and it's we know-it-alls who are trying to see things through our own warped lens. I don't think one can answer this question until he/she's actually seen and studied a significant number of the old matches in full, and it's safe to say there are few if any qualified experts that can claim such exhaustive scholarship.



So Doeg wasn't unbreakable after all. We'll see if this was a bad hair day or par for the course for John.



I see. Sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way! Though I don't go to library much anymore I'm still glad to see them and would hate to see them disappear. I'm generally skeptical of public funding of anything but it's still sad to see our dear leaders try to cut corners in such modest investments as public libraries, radio and television (as you may well know PBS and NPR have been perennial political footballs for ages now) when the valuable and invaluable benefits we derive from them probably far outweigh their monetary costs. And even in this age of the Internet, Barnes & Nobles and Starbucks I expect libraries to continue to play a unique role for a long time. For example why don't they figure out ways to help Google achieve its goal of archiving everything so people can access such valuable resources as ATL?

Of course that's not the only challenge libraries face that they can turn into a plus. If you're interested Director of the Center for Media and Citizenship Siva Vaidhyanathan recently shared his thoughts on how the new Librarian of Congress can help his or her institution become relevant again:

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._great_librarian_to_replace_james.single.html

I have cited ALT on Wikipedia just like a newspaper, with the name of the article and publication, and the date of course, without a volume or issue #. Issue was Sept. 5, 1932, article was "Details About Players", page 50, no author given.

At the '29 Nationals, Doeg was unbroken in a quarterfinal win over Bunny Austin, in 14 service games.

(By comparison, both Vines and Budge had dominating wins over Austin in Wimbledon finals, but neither man was unbroken in those wins).

Re: Vines breaking Doeg 6 times in their Longwood final, it was described in the press more as an impressive feat by Vines, rather than a subpar performance by Doeg. Doeg was coming back from a layoff but the match was described as very high level by both players (which I just mention because Doeg could be somewhat erratic).

Budge wrote a little about Doeg in an earlier book of his, Budge On Tennis (1939), p. 51:

McLoughlin was a terror in storming the net behind his service, and Doeg's left-handed service, one of the two or three best of all time, was so demoralizing that it constituted a mental hazard for his opponent. The latter was always harried with the thought that if he ever lost his own service, the set was gone, so seldom was anyone able to break through Doeg's.​

By the way, while flipping through that book I found this, about the flat hitting of that era:

The flat drive has had a great deal of publicity in recent years, particularly since Ellsworth Vines got to the top with it, but, as a matter of fact, far fewer shots are hit flat than you might be led to believe. It is the Eastern drive rather than the flat drive that has become popular.

Very few players who use the Eastern grip hit the ball perfectly flat consistently. Some degree of spin is used on most shots, for the reason that it is difficult to control the ball without the spin. The confusion is to be attributed to the fact that the Western grip is commonly associated with the top-spin drive, and the Eastern forehand, on which less over-spin is generally used, is identified as the flat drive.​

So your point above is well taken: there was confusion (of a normal kind) even back then as to terminology. That problem can only become compounded if you start comparing eras.

Incidentally both Vines and Budge were said to have Eastern grips (Budge started with a Western forehand but changed it, in 1934, a big factor in his subsequent success).

Thanks for the link, it's so true that the LOC is far from what it could be.

Hopefully the kind of changes talked about in the article would have an impact on tennis research. Just imagine the great tennis libraries at Newport and Wimbledon put online and linked to each other and to other sources.

 

[timnz]

Pate might well have been a first-rate server but as you may know he was a mere 6-footer. So unless he was a true anomaly like Sampras, Roddick or Tanner I'm rather doubtful he was among the best of the best (which, BTW, is what this thread is mainly about).


.

Not sure how someone qualifies to be a true anomaly. If you are excluding him due to his height - well Tanner is 6ft 0" and Sampras is 6ft 1". So if they are not excluded due to their height, not sure how Pate can be. I think more likely he is exluded for his lack of results.

 

[encylopedia]

Pate might well have been a first-rate server but as you may know he was a mere 6-footer. So unless he was a true anomaly like Sampras, Roddick or Tanner I'm rather doubtful he was among the best of the best (which, BTW, is what this thread is mainly about).
.

I did not see enough of Pate to make any real judgement but what I did see of him, he did not seem to be an ace machine by any means. The only real marquee singles match I ever saw some footage from was him getting crushed by Becker (though he did not play horribly...Becker played really well for early-round Becker) He did however have a nice motion with a great deal of pace. He had one of the fastest serves of the early 90's and he could certainly generate power up there with Becker/Stich (though....it wasn't recorded as significantly faster than those guys that I'm aware of....he could get into the upper 120's on the old radar)

Will add that his motion wasn't very....smooth or graceful, but it was...athletic. Sort of...unremarkable...no weird quirks.....but sort of a noticeably dynamic knee bend....a bit like Becker...or Thomas Johansson perhaps.

On another note, one of his early coaches/mentors: none other than Pancho Gonzales!

 

[Moose Malloy]

Like many I've been quite impressed by Fed's recent serving streak, enough to put him ahead of Rusedski now (stats be damned). That said I'm somewhat perplexed that we have yet to come across a single match (among the 14 that I have for Fed, unless I've missed a few) where a server of his caliber had more than 50% of his serves unreturned.

I have a lot more stats I haven't posted(partly because I thought most were interested in just matches with high unret rates)

Here are a few more for Fed(I'm sure I have more, can you let me know which ones you have so I don't repeat?) do you have the '07 W Final?

2008 USO Final d Murray 22/81: 27%
2004 W Final d Roddick 46/154: 30%
2012 AO SF l Nadal 33/135: 24%
2009 AO F l Nadal 41/172: 24%

I suspect he may have had a high rate vs Karlovic at some point. I don't think he had a high rate vs Isner at '12 Davis Cup, will check.

here are some stats I took on Karlovic at Newport this year:

vs Brown 37/63: 59%
1st serve: 30/43: 70%
2nd serve: 7/20: 35%
Brown had 53% of his serves unreturned as well

vs Sock 34/61: 56%
1st serve: 25/37: 67.5%
2nd serve: 9/24: 37.5%

 

[NonP]

I have cited ALT on Wikipedia just like a newspaper, with the name of the article and publication, and the date of course, without a volume or issue #. Issue was Sept. 5, 1932, article was "Details About Players", page 50, no author given.

Gotcha. I figured the volume and issue #s probably weren't necessary, but thought I'd ask just in case. Thanks for the page # anyway.

By the way, while flipping through that book I found this, about the flat hitting of that era:

The flat drive has had a great deal of publicity in recent years, particularly since Ellsworth Vines got to the top with it, but, as a matter of fact, far fewer shots are hit flat than you might be led to believe. It is the Eastern drive rather than the flat drive that has become popular.

Very few players who use the Eastern grip hit the ball perfectly flat consistently. Some degree of spin is used on most shots, for the reason that it is difficult to control the ball without the spin. The confusion is to be attributed to the fact that the Western grip is commonly associated with the top-spin drive, and the Eastern forehand, on which less over-spin is generally used, is identified as the flat drive.​

So your point above is well taken: there was confusion (of a normal kind) even back then as to terminology. That problem can only become compounded if you start comparing eras.

Incidentally both Vines and Budge were said to have Eastern grips (Budge started with a Western forehand but changed it, in 1934, a big factor in his subsequent success).

Yes, and if you watch the old videos you can see that Vines clearly wasn't going for flat bullets all the time. This nuance and how much spin he and his contemporaries actually used are impossible to convey with complete fidelity in words only.

And I'm sure you already know Sampras himself used an Eastern, so the similarities between him and Vines weren't just stylistic.

BTW do you have any other books written by the old-timers that you've found especially useful? Kramer's is the only one I have, and though I'm glad to own a few others by more recent players they're generally rather thin on the technical aspects of tennis unlike Jack's (Pete's breakdown of his rivals' game at the end of his book is a notable exception) that I hardly ever return to them. But judging by the portions you and pc1 quoted from Budge's books it looks like they're just as valuable as Kramer's (just ordered copies via Amazon, ha) and I was wondering if you know of any other good titles.

Thanks for the link, it's so true that the LOC is far from what it could be.

Hopefully the kind of changes talked about in the article would have an impact on tennis research. Just imagine the great tennis libraries at Newport and Wimbledon put online and linked to each other and to other sources.

No problemo. And yes, those are the type of changes I had in mind. I'd love to see what kind of gems the AEC holds in its vault.

Not sure how someone qualifies to be a true anomaly. If you are excluding him due to his height - well Tanner is 6ft 0" and Sampras is 6ft 1". So if they are not excluded due to their height, not sure how Pate can be. I think more likely he is exluded for his lack of results.

I meant an anomaly in the sense of whether Pate's serve was exceptionally strong for a player of his height, hence my mentioning Tanner and Sampras as examples. I can't say much for Tanner but if you're interested in how unusual Pete's (and Roddick's) serve was in terms of free points you can start here. I don't exclude shorter players based on height alone, but for them to make the all-time list they generally must have an unusual strength or two to offset this physical limitation, and it's hard to overlook Pate's relatively poor results in this context.

I did not see enough of Pate to make any real judgement but what I did see of him, he did not seem to be an ace machine by any means. The only real marquee singles match I ever saw some footage from was him getting crushed by Becker (though he did not play horribly...Becker played really well for early-round Becker) He did however have a nice motion with a great deal of pace. He had one of the fastest serves of the early 90's and he could certainly generate power up there with Becker/Stich (though....it wasn't recorded as significantly faster than those guys that I'm aware of....he could get into the upper 120's on the old radar)

Will add that his motion wasn't very....smooth or graceful, but it was...athletic. Sort of...unremarkable...no weird quirks.....but sort of a noticeably dynamic knee bend....a bit like Becker...or Thomas Johansson perhaps.

On another note, one of his early coaches/mentors: none other than Pancho Gonzales!

Astute observations as usual, cyclo. So it does seem Pate just misses the cut. And thanks for the cool tidbit about his relationship with Pancho!

I have a lot more stats I haven't posted(partly because I thought most were interested in just matches with high unret rates)

Here are a few more for Fed(I'm sure I have more, can you let me know which ones you have so I don't repeat?) do you have the '07 W Final?

2008 USO Final d Murray 22/81: 27%
2004 W Final d Roddick 46/154: 30%
2012 AO SF l Nadal 33/135: 24%
2009 AO F l Nadal 41/172: 24%

I suspect he may have had a high rate vs Karlovic at some point. I don't think he had a high rate vs Isner at '12 Davis Cup, will check.

Yes, I do have Fed's stats for the '07 W final, and also for the '08 USO final against Murray. So apart from those already mentioned (including his possibly but not probably career-high 49.2% against Pete in their '01 W 4th-rounder) here are the ones in my collection:

2003 Wim F vs Philippoussis
2009 Wim F vs Roddick
2012 Wim SF vs Djokovic
2005 USO F vs Agassi
2007 YEC SF vs Nadal
2007 Wimb F vs Nadal
2006 YEC F vs Blake
2008 AO SF vs Djokovic
2008 USO F vs Murray
2006 YEC SF vs Nadal
2004 USO F vs Hewitt
2006 FO F vs Nadal
2006 Rome F vs Nadal

And since that '12 DC rubber against Isner was on clay you're probably right Fed didn't have a high % there, but John might well have* and really I'm interested in all matches w/unreturned %s so feel free to post the numbers here anytime!

*You probably already know this but per the ATP no one has held serve on clay more often than Isner since '91. For starters his 93.6% of service games won last year is the highest rate I have seen from anyone on the ATP site, with Roddick coming closest at 93.5% in '01. In fact John is the only one so far that has cracked 90% (unrounded) in this stat more than twice: 93.1% in '12 and 92.4% this year. The only other players in this exclusive club are Raonic (twice, with 92.3% in '12 and 91.7% in '15 though in only 6 matches this year), Karlovic (91.9% in '06), Nadal (91.2% in '10) and Djokovic (90.7% this year). Nobody did it in the '90s, though Courier came close in '92 with 89.1% (but as I've pointed out Jim probably would've cracked 90% in this era because the gradual increases in % of service games won have been especially dramatic on clay.)

here are some stats I took on Karlovic at Newport this year:

vs Brown 37/63: 59%
1st serve: 30/43: 70%
2nd serve: 7/20: 35%
Brown had 53% of his serves unreturned as well

vs Sock 34/61: 56%
1st serve: 25/37: 67.5%
2nd serve: 9/24: 37.5%

Grazie. It's quite striking how 60% seems to be the holy grail of all unreturned-serve %s. I mean even Karlovic can't quite clear that mark on grass against two below-average returners in Brown and Sock, and on grass to boot!

Speaking of whom/which I do know of two matches where Ivo did score above 60%: in the '07 Stockholm final against T. Johansson with 60.6%, and in the 1st round of '05 Wim against Bracciali with at least 66.7%. Do you have anything else? Also have you gotten Ivo's actual % for that Bracciali match yet? Thanks again.

 

[NonP]

In what may well be my speediest update since the thread's inception here are the new list and honorable mentions:

1. Ivanisevic
2. Karlovic
3. Sampras
4. Gonzales
5. Krajicek
6. Arthurs
7. Roddick
8. Newcombe
9. Isner
10. Becker
11. Zivojinovic
12. Raonic
13. Philippoussis
14. McEnroe
15. Tanner
16. Stich
17. Curren
18. Smith
19. Federer
20. Rusedski
21. Noah

Honorary mentions:

• McLoughlin, Maurice - perhaps the first distinguished cannonball serve in tennis history
• Tilden - yet another storied power serve, which he bolstered with spin and accuracy
• Doeg, John - Ivanisevic to Vines' Sampras, a southpaw whose serve was considered one of the two or three greatest ever (along with Vines') in his heyday
• Vines - by many accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era
• Kramer - in addition to a formidable first delivery, perhaps the best second serve before Newcombe and Sampras
• Denton - his unusual service motion notwithstanding, an ace dispenser that could bring enormous heat
• Edberg - for his iconic kicker (any logo ring a bell?), arguably the best ever for serve-and-volley
• Johansson, Joachim - Denton of the aughts

(Cool new format, eh?)

The case for Doeg's HM has been made quite forcefully (if somewhat inadvertently) of late and if you've missed it I suggest you read my most recent exchanges with krosero. (I'll go ahead and add to the Wikipedia article on Doeg once I confirm the publication details of the other Budge excerpt with pc1 or with my own soon-to-arrive and hopefully readable copy.) And as you can see I've finally added Smith to the list. I know Limpin once told me his serve was better than Newk's, but I recall more than one dissenting voice then and a few fuzzy clips now up on YT suggest he wasn't quite the ace machine that Curren or Becker was, even after making educated adjustments for conditions. So Smith just above Federer for now, as usual my rankings remain quite fluid.

Speaking of which you may have seen that I've switched some names since last time. Though Mac's delivery was indeed among the most feared in his salad days the fact that it suffered such a sharp post-prime decline while Becker's more or less held its own tells me Boris deserves to be ranked higher. And while Tanner's serve might well be among the most dangerous at his peak his relatively mediocre freebie %s that we have so far bring him down a notch or two as well. As always once we have more cold hard facts Tanner's stock may rise up again.

And I know Pete in his book revealed Stich's 2nd serve as the one he feared most, but even after taking into account Mike's erratic nature and early departure from the game (in other words Stich never got to pad his service stats in the late '90s and beyond) I find it hard to justify the significant statistical gaps between him and the likes of Flipper, Raonic and probably Bobo and maybe Curren (again adjusting for conditions). Since we still have next to nothing for Curren I'll leave him below Stich for the time being, but Bobo and Raonic have now moved past the aforementioned names and sit just below Boris, yes big leaps for these two. And I've placed Flipper above Mac and Tanner as well.

So a major revamp this time. But that doesn't mean we can rest easy and in addition to more fine-tuning we still have more sleuthing to do for these guys (listed by order of birth):

• Gerald Patterson (1895)
• Bob Falkenburg (1926)
• Mike Sangster (1940)
• John Feaver (1952)

Yet again old-timers like Patterson or Falkenburg might be worth an honorary mention (though I'm leaning towards leaving the former out given Budge's mentioning McLoughlin but not Patterson in his estimation of the two or three best servers in history), and maybe one or more of the older posters can tell us about Sangster and Feaver. As always any stats, press reports and firsthand accounts would be helpful. Much obliged!

 

[pc1]

In what may well be my speediest update since the thread's inception here are the new list and honorable mentions:

1. Ivanisevic
2. Karlovic
3. Sampras
4. Gonzales
5. Krajicek
6. Arthurs
7. Roddick
8. Newcombe
9. Isner
10. Becker
11. Zivojinovic
12. Raonic
13. Philippoussis
14. McEnroe
15. Tanner
16. Stich
17. Curren
18. Smith
19. Federer
20. Rusedski
21. Noah

Honorary mentions:

• McLoughlin, Maurice - perhaps the first distinguished cannonball serve in tennis history
• Tilden - yet another storied power serve, which he bolstered with spin and accuracy
• Doeg, John - Ivanisevic to Vines' Sampras, a southpaw whose serve was considered one of the two or three greatest ever (along with Vines') in his heyday
• Vines - by many accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era
• Kramer - in addition to a formidable first delivery, perhaps the best second serve before Newcombe and Sampras
• Denton - his unusual service motion notwithstanding, an ace dispenser that could bring enormous heat
• Edberg - for his iconic kicker (any logo ring a bell?), arguably the best ever for serve-and-volley
• Johansson, Joachim - Denton of the aughts

(Cool new format, eh?)

The case for Doeg's HM has been made quite forcefully (if somewhat inadvertently) of late and if you've missed it I suggest you read my most recent exchanges with krosero. (I'll go ahead and add to the Wikipedia article on Doeg once I confirm the publication details of the other Budge excerpt with pc1 or with my own soon-to-arrive and hopefully readable copy.) And as you can see I've finally added Smith to the list. I know Limpin once told me his serve was better than Newk's, but I recall more than one dissenting voice then and a few fuzzy clips now up on YT suggest he wasn't quite the ace machine that Curren or Becker was, even after making educated adjustments for conditions. So Smith just above Federer for now, as usual my rankings remain quite fluid.

Speaking of which you may have seen that I've switched some names since last time. Though Mac's delivery was indeed among the most feared in his salad days the fact that it suffered such a sharp post-prime decline while Becker's more or less held its own tells me Boris deserves to be ranked higher. And while Tanner's serve might well be among the most dangerous at his peak his relatively mediocre freebie %s that we have so far bring him down a notch or two as well. As always once we have more cold hard facts Tanner's stock may rise up again.

And I know Pete in his book revealed Stich's 2nd serve as the one he feared most, but even after taking into account Mike's erratic nature and early departure from the game (in other words Stich never got to pad his service stats in the late '90s and beyond) I find it hard to justify the significant statistical gaps between him and the likes of Flipper, Raonic and probably Bobo and maybe Curren (again adjusting for conditions). Since we still have next to nothing for Curren I'll leave him below Stich for the time being, but Bobo and Raonic have now moved past the aforementioned names and sit just below Boris, yes big leaps for these two. And I've placed Flipper above Mac and Tanner as well.

So a major revamp this time. But that doesn't mean we can rest easy and in addition to more fine-tuning we still have more sleuthing to do for these guys (listed by order of birth):

• Gerald Patterson (1895)
• Bob Falkenburg (1926)
• Mike Sangster (1940)
• John Feaver (1952)

Yet again old-timers like Patterson or Falkenburg might be worth an honorary mention (though I'm leaning towards leaving the former out given Budge's mentioning McLoughlin but not Patterson in his estimation of the two or three best servers in history), and maybe one or more of the older posters can tell us about Sangster and Feaver. As always any stats, press reports and firsthand accounts would be helpful. Much obliged!

NonP,

Newcombe was considered to have the best serve in the game in his game and it was considered superior to Stan Smith's serve. Smith's first serve was perhaps a bit faster off the racquet but Newcombe's serve was very heavy and could knock the racquet out of your hand.

Jack Kramer's serve is generally considered to be superior to that of Newcombe's historically and even his second serve was considered to be perhaps slightly superior to Newcombe's. I would rank Kramer's serve in the top five all time.
http://admin.tennischannel.com/news/NewsDetails.aspx?newsid=6915

 

[krosero]

BTW do you have any other books written by the old-timers that you've found especially useful? Kramer's is the only one I have, and though I'm glad to own a few others by more recent players they're generally rather thin on the technical aspects of tennis unlike Jack's (Pete's breakdown of his rivals' game at the end of his book is a notable exception) that I hardly ever return to them. But judging by the portions you and pc1 quoted from Budge's books it looks like they're just as valuable as Kramer's (just ordered copies via Amazon, ha) and I was wondering if you know of any other good titles.

Vines wrote one of the best: http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/ellsworth-vines-10-best-list.120080/

And Tilden's books are the gold standard (Match Play and the Spin of the Ball, The Art of Lawn Tennis). He wrote a lot about technique and described players' games in detail.

I like that section of Sampras' book too, well worth reading.

 

[Dan Lobb]

NonP, I've said it before, but great thread. I appreciate the emphasis on stats and on careful decision-making.

Some years ago I assembled a list of snippets from press accounts in 1939, describing Vines' serve in his matches that year. I'll put it here, in a separate post.

I made that list actually because I was debating Dan about whether Vines ever served under-hand, due to injury, in the '39 tours. Dan claimed he did. However, at the time of that debate, we did not have many newspaper reports at all from that year; and we didn't even know when, or by whom, the claim of under-hand serving was made. We have since learned that Vines himself said he served under-hand to Budge in 1939, in an interview in 1990. We have not found any reference to under-hand serving published before 1990.

And I've since assembled a match-by-match documentation of Vines' tours that year, showing great serving by Vines throughout the season, with no mention, even in the lengthiest articles from the time period, that Vines ever served under-hand.

To his great credit Dan, when I first posted the list of snippets describing Vines' serve that year, withdrew the claim of underhand serving. He has since said that Vines pulled a muscle in '39 which affected his serving -- and I agree with that; I think there's good evidence for it, though I still have many questions about it.

Sorry for the long explanation, and the last thing I want to do is derail the thread. The injury issue is a contentious one with a long backstory here, and I hardly want this great thread to become about that. If anyone wants to discuss that issue (or if you, NonP, want to say anything about it), some good threads for that might be the 1939 tour thread (http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=512828) or my thread about the difficult issues concering human memory (http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/showthread.php?t=524775).

Human memory, I think, is an issue that is impossible not to look at, when debating claims about long-ago events. But that is surely a HUGE issue that would sidetrack this thread.

Just wanted to give you the context in which the list of snippets (which I will post) was created. It was created to debate Vines' injury, not to describe Vines' serving in general -- but I've just realized that it serves that purpose perfectly well.

There is no doubt in my mind, whatsoever, that Vines was one of the greatest servers of all time. I had merely assumed it to be true, because that's his reputation; but now after my extensive research of his decade, I know it to be true.

Thanks for the research, Krosero. I thought that I had read that Vines served for at least some time underhand in that series, but I could not remember where I read that...thanks for finding the reference.
Now, yes...I am afraid that I may have to withdraw my withdrawal..I doubt that Vines would concoct this story...it must be true...and that means, of course, that yours truly is once again vindicated by the record of history....sorry.

 

[encylopedia]

Astute observations as usual, cyclo. So it does seem Pate just misses the cut. And thanks for the cool tidbit about his relationship with Pancho!.

Yes, I had read about that, and a bit from Pancho and Pate about it....but I don't recall what they said....I think that was in Pate's late teenage years, and as he was breaking onto the tour. I could not help but wonder if that excellent pace for his height may have been aided by tweaks from Pancho.

I don't think Pate belongs on your list....I remember trying to explore serve stats in regard to him.....aces were about the only metric I could come up with....and in my cursory look they seemed unremarkable. He might have hit 20 aces here or there, but a great many matches seemed to be 1-5....and in those matches some opponents with unremarkable serves unsurprisingly matched or sometimes exceeded those numbers. I doubt players were shaking before the matches worrying about a potential 30 aces.......

I think he would be put on my list of "servers who could (in terms of peak pace) punch beyond their height". Along with people like ToJo and Bracialli (you mentioned these two below in another context), Ben Becker, Agenor, etc..... (arguably even Rios and Chang)
...but like some of those others, it didn't seem like Pate really had a consistently huge weapon. In some cases this was probably lack of reach, or strategy....or some other reason they weren't consistent....

I would guess that even guys like ToJo (at an inch or 2 shorter - I think he was closer to 5'10 than 5'11), or Kolschreiber, or Wayne Ferreira were probably greater serve weapon threats at ~6 feet than Pate. Even if Kolschreiber/Ferreira probably could not get quite as much heat as Pate, they seemed pretty consistent at getting a decent number of free points day in and day out.

 

[LeeD]

Colin Dibley had the fastest serve in the late '70's. High 140's.
Victor Amaya, a 6'6" lefty, served into the low 140's.

 

[NonP]

NonP,

Newcombe was considered to have the best serve in the game in his game and it was considered superior to Stan Smith's serve. Smith's first serve was perhaps a bit faster off the racquet but Newcombe's serve was very heavy and could knock the racquet out of your hand.

Jack Kramer's serve is generally considered to be superior to that of Newcombe's historically and even his second serve was considered to be perhaps slightly superior to Newcombe's. I would rank Kramer's serve in the top five all time.

pc1, yes I remember you mentioning that heaviness factor in favor of Newk over Smith, and I tend to agree with you as can be seen from my ranking.

I'd think Kramer's serve was indeed even better than Newk's myself but as you recall I've decided to give the old-timers honorary mentions only due to lack of statistical and visual evidence. (Gonzales I've ranked as none other than Braden has provided a detailed assessment of his serve and I saw little to quibble with.) But I'm on the fence about adding Vines to the list and might change my mind about Kramer eventually.

Vines wrote one of the best: http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/ellsworth-vines-10-best-list.120080/

And Tilden's books are the gold standard (Match Play and the Spin of the Ball, The Art of Lawn Tennis). He wrote a lot about technique and described players' games in detail.

Grazie ancora. Placed an order for the Vines just yesterday. And how could I forget about Tilden?! Since I don't wanna go broke over tennis (yet) I'll just add the Tilden titles to my wish list until I finish all the ones by Budge and Vines (and also the new Kundera novel I've yet to start).

Thanks for the research, Krosero. I thought that I had read that Vines served for at least some time underhand in that series, but I could not remember where I read that...thanks for finding the reference.
Now, yes...I am afraid that I may have to withdraw my withdrawal..I doubt that Vines would concoct this story...it must be true...and that means, of course, that yours truly is once again vindicated by the record of history....sorry.

Thought that was too easy. What say you to this, krosero?

I don't think Pate belongs on your list....I remember trying to explore serve stats in regard to him.....aces were about the only metric I could come up with....and in my cursory look they seemed unremarkable. He might have hit 20 aces here or there, but a great many matches seemed to be 1-5....and in those matches some opponents with unremarkable serves unsurprisingly matched or sometimes exceeded those numbers. I doubt players were shaking before the matches worrying about a potential 30 aces.......

I think he would be put on my list of "servers who could (in terms of peak pace) punch beyond their height". Along with people like ToJo and Bracialli (you mentioned these two below in another context), Ben Becker, Agenor, etc..... (arguably even Rios and Chang)
...but like some of those others, it didn't seem like Pate really had a consistently huge weapon. In some cases this was probably lack of reach, or strategy....or some other reason they weren't consistent....

I would guess that even guys like ToJo (at an inch or 2 shorter - I think he was closer to 5'10 than 5'11), or Kolschreiber, or Wayne Ferreira were probably greater serve weapon threats at ~6 feet than Pate. Even if Kolschreiber/Ferreira probably could not get quite as much heat as Pate, they seemed pretty consistent at getting a decent number of free points day in and day out.

Yes, that sounds about right. Inch for inch Pate would rank fairly high, but not against the likes of Sampras, Roddick, Tanner and Curren, let alone Goran, Karlovic, Krajicek and the rest.

I'm also with you on all the other guys you mentioned, especially Kohlschreiber who used to top 130 mph (IIRC he served close to 140 mph on occasion at '12 Wimbledon) and score aces in double digits routinely just a few years ago. Ditto Rios, though his 2nd-serve was a bit of a liability. Not so sure about Chang, though. As you know Chang went to great lengths to get that extra power on his serve, and in his book even he doesn't sound so certain that all the tweaking with his racquets produced optimal results. But I will add in his defense that his career 1st-serve % (56% per the ATP) is somewhat higher than one might expect.

Also now that you mention him do you know why Ferreira gave Pete such fits? In his book Pete expresses his own puzzlement and offers little explanation except that Wayne played like he had nothing to lose (of course), and while that's true I find it too much of a cliche to be satisfying. At least in the case of Fed vs. Simon I can say players with a strong BH side have always given Fed trouble because his trademark inside-out FH isn't quite as effective against them, but I can't think of something similarly concrete with respect to Pete vs. Wayne.

P.S. I did notice your exchange with kandamrgam. Haven't read all of it yet but thanks for filling me in.

Colin Dibley had the fastest serve in the late '70's. High 140's.
Victor Amaya, a 6'6" lefty, served into the low 140's.

Dibley was mentioned ealrier but eventually rejected due to his supposed inconsistency, but many similar claims about other players have proven to be exaggerated so I'll add him to the to-be-investigated list in my next update.

Amaya OTOH was rejected because he was deemed too much of a doubles specialist but then he actually played more career ATP-level matches than Arthurs who sits on the money list, so if you or anyone else want to stick up for him feel free to fire away, but preferably with stats, articles or something else useful.

 

[NonP]

And now that I've responded to everyone I wanna share some relevant stats I've been able to dig up. If you followed my recent discussion with TheFifthSet you might have noticed that when I compared Karlovic's career H2Hs against the top 10 (courtesy of tennisabstract.com--not quite complete but still very useful as it provides stats not generally found elsewhere) with Ivanisevic's I found that Goran's %s of 1st-serve points won were quite comparable to Ivo's though, perhaps unsurprisingly due to his tendency to DF, his 2nd-serve %s didn't look quite as good. (FYI Sampras wasn't half bad himself.) In fact his 1st-serve %s looked if anything even better, and since I wanted to explore this topic more in depth before Ivo's recent Wimbledon stats are gone from the official website I wanted to see how Goran did in terms of free points at 2001 Wimby for comparison. Now a couple of things:

• I chose '01 Wimby for Goran and this year's for Ivo because it's safe to say both guys have never served significantly better at any other previous major. In fact I'm all but certain this is true in Ivo's case because he was clearly going for more on 2nd serves at this year's Wimby than usual.
• '01 W is especially a good reference point as it was, contrary to dogged denials by a few camps of dubious motives, the first year with the new "slow" grass (scroll below).

So let's look at some numbers. Here are Goran's ace %s from each round of his '01 Wimby run, calculated as # of aces divided by total service points (in parentheses):

1R - 31.0% (22/71)
2R - 28.9% (35/121)
3R - 36.9% (41/111)
4R - 25.9% (22/85)
QF - 22.4% (30/134)
SF - 20.9% (36/172)
F - 16.5% (27/164)
Total - 24.8% (213/858) [1st four rounds only: 30.9% (120/388)]

And Ivo's (the ace and point totals come from the link in the first bullet point above but the ace %s are new):

1R - 33.9% (42/124)
2R - 31.4% (53/169)
3R - 31.3% (41/131)
4R - 20.7% (29/140)
Total - 29.3% (165/564)

And now the obligatory notes:

• If we go by the ace counts alone as most posters are wont Ivo clearly tops Goran as he fired a ridiculous 41.25 aces per match vs. Goran's "mere" 30.4, but you can see their difference in ace frequency per service point isn't quite as dramatic. In fact Goran in his 1st four rounds did even better than Ivo, 30.9% vs. 29.3%.
• Of course one could counter that Karlovic's opposition in the 4th round needs to be considered as Murray is a better returner than anyone Goran faced in his own 1st four rounds, but then I can point to Goran's generally superior opposition in the later rounds including Henman who was nearly as good as Murray (he won 30.2% of his return games in '01), and as can be expected his ace %s did drop as he went deeper. Besides even if we were to give Ivo, say, an extra 10 aces for his match against Murray his ace frequency for the tournament would still be virtually the same as Goran's (31.0% vs. the latter's actual 30.9%).
  
• Notice how Ivo's %s generally stayed the same (again except in the 4th round against Murray) while Goran's were more up and down. So even at his arguably best event ever Goran couldn't quite keep himself in check, as anyone who saw his nail-biting 5-setters in the SF and F should know.
• The previous two bullet points show why we should be wary of direct comparisons between Ivo's and Goran's or any other (especially older) player's service (or return) stats. When I say a player's superior opposition needs to be considered I don't just refer to pure returning ability, but also the more challenging conditions that the better player must navigate more often. I mean, would Karlovic really be unfazed by the highly partisan crowd in the SF against British hope Henman, and also by the daunting circumstance of playing in his 1st major final (which one could say is easier than trying to redeem oneself after 3 failed attempts) against S&V master Rafter in front of the most boisterous crowd Wimbledon has probably ever seen, when he found it difficult to deal with Murray--who, I should add, had already brought a Wimbledon trophy to his home country before and didn't challenge Ivo to make nearly as many thread-the-needle passes as Tim and Pat--as early as in the 4th round? Possible, yes, but I say not probable.
• Also notice Goran's 36.9% rate against Roddick in the 3rd round, easily the highest on either Goran's or Ivo's tally. Unsurprisingly that was also the same match where Goran posted his highest 1st-serve % (72%) during his dream run, but that's still about the same or lower than Ivo's in his own 2nd- and 3rd-rounders (72% and 76% respectively). I know this is a small sample, but the fact that Goran was able to get more free points despite fewer 1st serves in, along with the other stats already referenced in this and previous posts, lends credence to my observation that while Ivo's serve may well be more effective against lesser opposition Goran's due to his lefty spin and disguise is probably even more dangerous against top players/returners.
  
• Goran had pretty high 1st-serve %s throughout the tournament (61.5% or 528/858 in total service points), but he also had 57% for the year, slightly higher than his career 55% (per the ATP). Fun to imagine just how much he'd improve as a server today due to the extra spin afforded by the up-to-date sticks.

Also we haven't even talked about unreturned serves. I don't have Ivo's numbers handy (if you do please don't hesitate to share) but Goran had some big %s in that area as well: a sensational 62.2% (69/111) vs. Roddick in the 3rd round, 55.2% (74/134) vs. Safin in the QF and 45.1% (74/164) vs. Rafter in the F. (See here for a primer on unreturned-serve %s if you fail to see just how good these are.) I think it safe to say Ivo didn't do much better than that at this year's Wimby, when he failed to crack 60% in his recent two matches against Brown and Sock at Newport, especially on grass courts presumably faster than Wimbledon's (I frankly doubt that, just throwing out there what the self-proclaimed surface-speed experts like to tell us). And remember, Pete won 59.2% in unreturned serves himself in the '97 Wimby final, despite only 59% in 1st serves and 17 aces and against a darn good returner in Pioline.

All of which is a long-winded way to show just how misleading ace counts can be. Of course this is especially true with respect to guys like Sampras and Roddick whose %s of freebies are well above what you might expect from their ace totals, but even between an ace machine like Ivanisevic and Karlovic what seems like a great gap turns out to be not so significant at all upon closer scrutiny, which can be rather hard to accept for many. For one TheFifthSet is among the more informed posters here and even he was at first adamant that Ivo "stomps the yard" when it comes to serves only, though to his credit he did later moderate (if not fully concede) his stance. And what else can you really expect, when such limited understanding of a serve's effectiveness dates back to the very beginning of modern tennis?!

On a final (historically related) note, while Goran's service stats aren't too far apart from Pete's (or Ivo's) on his best days he could render his opponents completely helpless as his serve was that much hard to read and return. When Goran's serve was on you knew there was nothing you could do but to wait for him to crack, and I suspect Budge had something similar in mind when he discussed how Doeg left his opponents so demoralized that once he broke their serve they felt the set was already his. Not that Doeg was literally unbreakable, but that at his best he had a much better chance of breaking you than the other way around. It's this otherworldly peak of his that convinces me to keep Goran in 1st place, but I see why others might feel differently and you're certainly welcome to come up with your own list as you see fit.

 

[krosero]

Thanks for the research, Krosero. I thought that I had read that Vines served for at least some time underhand in that series, but I could not remember where I read that...thanks for finding the reference.
Now, yes...I am afraid that I may have to withdraw my withdrawal..I doubt that Vines would concoct this story...it must be true...and that means, of course, that yours truly is once again vindicated by the record of history....sorry.

Thanks should go to PC1, who found the interview and posted the link last year, IIRC: http://articles.latimes.com/1990-12-11/sports/sp-6213_1_ellsworth-vines/5

Dan, you've allowed only two possible options here:

1) Vines either concocted the story; or
2) The story must be true

Basing the argument like this, upon someone's honesty, is not necessary, because there are other options. I don't believe Vines concocted the story either; I'm sure he was relating his memories as he recalled them. But the option of a mistaken memory is always an option in these types of historical discussions, especially when we're talking about a statement made decades after the events in question. Though there is no way to prove it, I think it is far more likely that Vines serving underhand to Budge is a mistaken memory, rather than being a fully accurate memory of a real event (I regard this possibility as slim-to-none), or intentional fabrication by Vines (a possibility I completely reject).

There is a lot that could be discussed about memory issues in general. But we know more specifically, too, that Vines, late in life, related several memories about his career that were factually incorrect. I think, Dan, that you're familiar with the interview he gave to Stan Hart in 1983; I think you've mentioned it before. It appears in Hart's book, Once a Champion: Legendary Tennis Stars Revisited (1985), on p. 229. Hart tracked down and interviewed several tennis champions, and published those interviews in his book. His interview with Vines ended up really focusing on the issues of memory, because Vines made a number of errors about some of the key moments of his tennis career; and Hart found evidence (which he left unproved) that Vines was mistaken about certain events in his golf career, as well.

I guess you've read this interview, right? Are you aware of other mistaken memories by Vines (the injury issue aside)?

 

[pc1]

In what may well be my speediest update since the thread's inception here are the new list and honorable mentions:

1. Ivanisevic
2. Karlovic
3. Sampras
4. Gonzales
5. Krajicek
6. Arthurs
7. Roddick
8. Newcombe
9. Isner
10. Becker
11. Zivojinovic
12. Raonic
13. Philippoussis
14. McEnroe
15. Tanner
16. Stich
17. Curren
18. Smith
19. Federer
20. Rusedski
21. Noah

Honorary mentions:

• McLoughlin, Maurice - perhaps the first distinguished cannonball serve in tennis history
• Tilden - yet another storied power serve, which he bolstered with spin and accuracy
• Doeg, John - Ivanisevic to Vines' Sampras, a southpaw whose serve was considered one of the two or three greatest ever (along with Vines') in his heyday
• Vines - by many accounts, the best and fastest serve of the pre-WWII era
• Kramer - in addition to a formidable first delivery, perhaps the best second serve before Newcombe and Sampras
• Denton - his unusual service motion notwithstanding, an ace dispenser that could bring enormous heat
• Edberg - for his iconic kicker (any logo ring a bell?), arguably the best ever for serve-and-volley
• Johansson, Joachim - Denton of the aughts

(Cool new format, eh?)

The case for Doeg's HM has been made quite forcefully (if somewhat inadvertently) of late and if you've missed it I suggest you read my most recent exchanges with krosero. (I'll go ahead and add to the Wikipedia article on Doeg once I confirm the publication details of the other Budge excerpt with pc1 or with my own soon-to-arrive and hopefully readable copy.) And as you can see I've finally added Smith to the list. I know Limpin once told me his serve was better than Newk's, but I recall more than one dissenting voice then and a few fuzzy clips now up on YT suggest he wasn't quite the ace machine that Curren or Becker was, even after making educated adjustments for conditions. So Smith just above Federer for now, as usual my rankings remain quite fluid.

Speaking of which you may have seen that I've switched some names since last time. Though Mac's delivery was indeed among the most feared in his salad days the fact that it suffered such a sharp post-prime decline while Becker's more or less held its own tells me Boris deserves to be ranked higher. And while Tanner's serve might well be among the most dangerous at his peak his relatively mediocre freebie %s that we have so far bring him down a notch or two as well. As always once we have more cold hard facts Tanner's stock may rise up again.

And I know Pete in his book revealed Stich's 2nd serve as the one he feared most, but even after taking into account Mike's erratic nature and early departure from the game (in other words Stich never got to pad his service stats in the late '90s and beyond) I find it hard to justify the significant statistical gaps between him and the likes of Flipper, Raonic and probably Bobo and maybe Curren (again adjusting for conditions). Since we still have next to nothing for Curren I'll leave him below Stich for the time being, but Bobo and Raonic have now moved past the aforementioned names and sit just below Boris, yes big leaps for these two. And I've placed Flipper above Mac and Tanner as well.

So a major revamp this time. But that doesn't mean we can rest easy and in addition to more fine-tuning we still have more sleuthing to do for these guys (listed by order of birth):

• Gerald Patterson (1895)
• Bob Falkenburg (1926)
• Mike Sangster (1940)
• John Feaver (1952)

Yet again old-timers like Patterson or Falkenburg might be worth an honorary mention (though I'm leaning towards leaving the former out given Budge's mentioning McLoughlin but not Patterson in his estimation of the two or three best servers in history), and maybe one or more of the older posters can tell us about Sangster and Feaver. As always any stats, press reports and firsthand accounts would be helpful. Much obliged!

NonP,

As you well known I believe Jack Kramer is one of the top five servers ever (one of the top few players also perhaps the greatest) and is arguably the greatest server ever. Here's some descriptions of Jack Kramer's serve.
1.Supreme master of all serves, often hit cannonball on second as well as first delivery. Pinpoint accuracy, amazing depth and consistency on flat, American twist and slice, which are hit with Continental grip. Later in the same book--Kramer's first delivery had a perfect relaxed motion, precision, and penetrating power, but his second serve was unequaled. His ability to "spot" it wherever he wanted it with no apparent effort was astounding. For depth, pace, and bounce there has never been anything like it. When he rifled his American twist into the corner, it kicked off like a ricocheting bullet (a deep,hard kick to the backhand is the hardest shot in tennis to handle). Kramer had total command of all serves, flat, slice or American twist with endless variations. He was as likely to ace you on a second as well as a first, then trip you up by using a kicker as his first delivery on the next point-from Tennis, Myth and Method by Ellsworth Vines.
2. He had an excellent service with plenty of pace and full mastery of flat, sliced or kick variations. It is detracting little to say that his service was not as fast as Patterson, Vines, or Gonzalez; it was at least comparable to Tilden's and thus could be classified as a big service. Cochet, Crawford, and Perry would perhaps have been pleased to have Kramer's second delivery as their first; with either his first or his second ball he could pressure on the receiver. His rhythmic action appeared so controlled that no matter how fast the ball flew he never seemed to be exerting his last ounce of energy. He practiced his serve diligently, and many people saw exhibition films of him serving at speed and knocking over a ball box placed almost anywhere in either of the service courts, or sending ball after ball through a set of small hoops fixed at different points above the net.-from Tennis, Styles and Stylists by Paul Metzler.
3. Kramer had the best second serve of all.--From Don Budge: A Tennis Memoir.
4. Jack had a natural rhythm on his serve, with a great big arc to his motion. His first serve was almost the equal of a Gonzalez or Vines delivery. But Kramer was in a class by himself when it came to the second serve, which was almost as tough as his first ball. So if he faulted on his first serve, which was not often, I was faced with returning a ball that was nearly as difficult to handle-from Court Hustler-An autobiography by Bobby Riggs with George McGann.
5. Like everyone else Pancho (Gonzalez) was forced in playing Kramer's game; and he experienced the futility of trying to outserve and outvolley a relentless machine.--from Tennis, Myth and Method by Ellsworth Vines.
6. Jack Kramer: The Complete Game--Jack was the best player I've ever seen.

Don Budge, who Kramer called the greatest player in the history of the game, was indeed a superb player. But Jake had the best all around game. He could hit the ball deep. And he had the best approach shot I've ever seen. Remember, after serve and service return, the approach shot is the third biggest shot in the game. On his approach shot Jake would lay the ball way back into the corner and it faded, especially on the forehand side. That meant his opponent was hitting a lot from inside the alley.

Jake was lethal when he got close to the net. He was rangy, had nice movement and great anticipation. It was almost impossible to pass him. And he didn't make any mistakes.

People always talked about him winning off his big serve, as if all he had was a big serve and a volley. Understandable, since in a way, he brought that game to the world. But in fact he was remarkable from the baseline. He told me that he could not remember ever losing on clay to Pancho Gonzalez. Think about that.--from Vic Braden's Mental Tennis by Vic Braden and Robert Wool.

I spoke with Vic Braden just a few weeks before he passed away in 2014 and I can tell you that he still believed Jack Kramer was the best player of all time.

 

[Moose Malloy]

And since that '12 DC rubber against Isner was on clay you're probably right Fed didn't have a high % there, but John might well have*

I posted that on page 15. Isner had 38% unret in that match.

Like many I've been quite impressed by Fed's recent serving streak, enough to put him ahead of Rusedski now (stats be damned). That said I'm somewhat perplexed that we have yet to come across a single match (among the 14 that I have for Fed, unless I've missed a few) where a server of his caliber had more than 50% of his serves unreturned.

It is surprising, but we haven't posted any stats involving any indoor matches. I have a couple, don't think they were particularly high rates. I think krosero posted some stats on Fed vs Santoro at '08AO, maybe that was a high rate(it was a beatdown)

So far I have just 3 matches from this period, the one with the highest rate being the classic '09 Wimby final where Fed scored 44.7% of his serves as freebies against Rodddick. So maybe ace frequency isn't so helpful here after all.

Yeah maybe there isn't as much of a correlation between aces and unret serves. at least universally. I'm pretty surprised that the unret rate in the '04 W(30%) final is much lower than the '09 one(with Roddick as well), didn't seem like there was much of a difference stylistically between those matches(lots of quick points) Guess the hotter weather in '09 may have given a bit of a boost on serves.

Also have you gotten Ivo's actual % for that Bracciali match yet?

I don't own that match.

 

[encylopedia]

People always talked about him winning off his big serve, as if all he had was a big serve and a volley. Understandable, since in a way, he brought that game to the world. But in fact he was remarkable from the baseline. He told me that he could not remember ever losing on clay to Pancho Gonzalez. Think about that.--from Vic Braden's Mental Tennis by Vic Braden and Robert Wool.

Vic also wrote in Tennis 2000 that when he asked Kramer what surface he would choose to play Gorgo on, Kramer responded "the slowest surface in the world"....which shocked Vic, but when Vic asked him to elaborate Kramer told him that as good as Gorgo was, he had some weaknesses, and that on a slow surface Kramer could eventually make him play those weaknesses. He claimed that both Gorgo and he knew that he was more consistent, and more mentally stable, and that gave him the advantage on a slow surface.

 

[Moose Malloy]

also NonP, I would put Philippoussis a lot higher than #13(certainly higher than Bobo), he has registered the 2nd highest rate of any player so far(right after Ivo) with 66% at '04 W(posted it on page 18) and that was when he was having a pretty crappy year. We also have a few others with him in the high 50s(one in 2006, when he was barely playing), wish I had more complete matches with him. I'm very curious about his final vs Goran at '97 Queens. Press reports say he was basically unreturnable that day.

but Goran had some big %s in that area as well: a sensational 62.2% (69/111) vs. Roddick in the 3rd round, 55.2% (74/134) vs. Safin in the QF and 45.1% (74/164) vs. Rafter in the F

I may get a copy of Goran-Rusedski from that event some day. There seemed to be very little coverage of that match in the press that day(was overshadowed by Fed-Peter and Henman-Martin understandably), but the commentators made it sound like Goran was in the zone though when they recapped the day, and that he was now a legit threat to go all the way. Also wish I could get a hold of some of his finals at Split. Seemed to be the consensus fastest court on tour in the 90s.

I mean even Karlovic can't quite clear that mark on grass against two below-average returners in Brown and Sock, and on grass to boot!

Well it sure seemed a lot higher than 59% vs Brown, since he was trying to take full swings on the returns and kept failing miserably. Interesting match tomorrow, Ivo vs Raonic. Hope to get stats, but I have a feeling TC won't stay with it the entire way(Bouchard is playing at the same time)

 

[pc1]

More on Jack Kramer.
In my time I have played against many players with great serves. Probably the greatest was Jack Kramer, who hit the ball very hard (his service was timed at 110 mph) and was extremely accurate and deceptive. Frank Sedgman is another good server, with a consistently hard first service which he follows with tremendous speed in to the net to volley away winners. Lew Hoad has a hard and deceptive service that has always presented me with difficulty. Barry MacKay, because of his height, can send down balls at terrific angles and has great power. However he usually directs his service to the backhand, and though it travels at high speed, it is not as difficult to handle as the more deceptive services of Kramer and Hoad. Bobby Riggs was a small player, but he accurately served to the corners, pulling his man out of court. Another hard and baffling server was the Czecholslovakian-born left-handed, Jaroslav Drobny, now a naturalized Briton.---From the Fireside Book of Tennis and the article "The Serve and How to Vary it" by Pancho Gonzalez.

In an average match, 50 percent of points are won by serve, the rest by volleys and ground strokes. There admittedly are traps in making such generalizations. A person like Kenneth Rosewall might win only one point a game on his serve, and the rest by volleys and ground strokes. On the other hand, I might win three points a game with my serve and only one with volley and ground strokes.---From the Fireside Book of Tennis and the article "The Serve and How to Vary it" by Pancho Gonzalez.

If I had to choose the best service I ever encounted, it would be a toss-up between Gonzalez's and Kramer's. I never saw Ellsworth Vines, but I believe his delivery was on the same level.---From the Fireside Book of Tennis and the article "The Service" by Frank Sedgman.