S&V is Obsolete

TTMR said:
Sure but that's not a sustainable strategy, that's throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Players will try a lot of stuff when they are desperate. S&V as a playstyle is obsolete.




That's just all false. Average service speed has gone up, service win% has gone up, return win% (obviously) has gone down. Slowing down the courts slightly blunted the impact of poly. Poly enables more spin and more spin allows for more speed. I am referring here to rotation of the ball and not trajectory or arc (for the topspin equals moonballing crowd).
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I don't agree, slower high bouncing courts enables poly players to rip those groundies with so much spin, faster lower bouncing courts makes it far less of an advantage. Yes the ball travels fast over the .net now, but "stops" and bounce up, before the speed was higher after the bounce. Everything is too easy now, resulting in a more one dimentional game(more boring i think)
 
S&V is a high risk, high reward tactic.
Imo, the main reason we don't see much S&V, is that most top players just aren't good enough when it comes to net play, and especially the mid court, transition volley. And most players are so fast, that any volley that isn't placed to a tee, will be a lost point. This is obvious when you see the top players at the net in doubles; they just lack the skillset to (judge and) execute the correct shot, and most of the time.
 
smalahove said:
S&V is a high risk, high reward tactic.
Imo, the main reason we don't see much S&V, is that most top players just aren't good enough when it comes to net play, and especially the mid court, transition volley. And most players are so fast, that any volley that isn't placed to a tee, will be a lost point. This is obvious when you see the top players at the net in doubles; they just lack the skillset to (judge and) execute the correct shot, and most of the time.
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Are they that much worse, or are the shots coming at them just a lot better? Hard to say for sure but I think with improvements in training, nutrition, exercise, practice time, racquets and strings, it's more likely that it's simply a lot more difficult to volley well (especially off a serve or return) compared to before.
 
morten said:
I don't agree, slower high bouncing courts enables poly players to rip those groundies with so much spin, faster lower bouncing courts makes it far less of an advantage. Yes the ball travels fast over the .net now, but "stops" and bounce up, before the speed was higher after the bounce. Everything is too easy now, resulting in a more one dimentional game(more boring i think)
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You can watch a carpet match from the 90s (eg the much lauded Becker/Sampras matches) and compare to watching a carpet match from the 70s or 80s to see the difference in pace. They were serving way harder and faster and ripping way more winners with the modern racquets compared to the wood/aluminum racquets. I am pretty sure they never had the ability to "slow down" carpet (it was usually just a super cheap turf), so the only difference would be the racquets and the players. The weight and feel of the racquet enabled more RPMs which allowed harder shots to stay in, and this was before poly. This helps both serves and groundstrokes, but hurts the volley. That's why the 70s and 80s S&Vers that won slams were generally volley-dominant players, and the 90s/2000s S&Vers that won slams were serve-dominant players, with the sole exception of Rafter (I'd put Edberg as neither serve nor volley-dominant but his career ended very early in the 90s).
 
TTMR said:
You can watch a carpet match from the 90s (eg the much lauded Becker/Sampras matches) and compare to watching a carpet match from the 70s or 80s to see the difference in pace. They were serving way harder and faster and ripping way more winners with the modern racquets compared to the wood/aluminum racquets. I am pretty sure they never had the ability to "slow down" carpet (it was usually just a super cheap turf), so the only difference would be the racquets and the players. The weight and feel of the racquet enabled more RPMs which allowed harder shots to stay in, and this was before poly. This helps both serves and groundstrokes, but hurts the volley. That's why the 70s and 80s S&Vers that won slams were generally volley-dominant players, and the 90s/2000s S&Vers that won slams were serve-dominant players, with the sole exception of Rafter (I'd put Edberg as neither serve nor volley-dominant but his career ended very early in the 90s).
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Yeah I think it's important to separate the serve and volley when some people just consider them in one package. Racquets and strings greatly buffed serves to the point it negated any effects brought by homogenization as evidenced by the better service stats across the board. However volleys took a big hit as the same racquet tech meant returns came back harder and passing shots became easier, facilitated by the modern open stance angular momentum technique that capitalizes on the modern tech.

This is why most big servers nowadays are serve+1 players rather than straight up S n Vers.
 
Clay lover said:
Yeah I think it's important to separate the serve and volley when some people just consider them in one package. Racquets and strings greatly buffed serves to the point it negated any effects brought by homogenization as evidenced by the better service stats across the board. However volleys took a big hit as the same racquet tech meant returns came back harder and passing shots became easier, facilitated by the modern open stance angular momentum technique that capitalizes on the modern tech.

This is why most big servers nowadays are serve+1 players rather than straight up S n Vers.
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I think people get confused and think that because serve and volley is an aggressive strategy that it is necessarily a fast-paced strategy, and that baselining is a slower paced strategy because it's more defensive. It's fast in the sense that points end faster, but not fast in the sense that the ball is hit harder or faster.

Mischa Zverev faced harder shots, when you factor the weight of the shot [pace + spin], at the net, when he beat Andy Murray than McEnroe ever faced.
 
TTMR said:
I think people get confused and think that because serve and volley is an aggressive strategy that it is necessarily a fast-paced strategy, and that baselining is a slower paced strategy because it's more defensive. It's fast in the sense that points end faster, but not fast in the sense that the ball is hit harder or faster.

Mischa Zverev faced harder shots, when you factor the weight of the shot [pace + spin], at the net, when he beat Andy Murray than McEnroe ever faced.
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That's because MischaGOAT and McEnroe is sucks.
 
TearTheRoofOff said:
That's because MischaGOAT and McEnroe is sucks.
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Lol no. Mischa and Andy never had to play on ultra fast bad bouncing courts with wood racquets. They had a lot of "privileges" that JMac and his contemporaries never had.

We can never know how players would have evolved if they were born at a different time.
 
TTMR said:
You can watch a carpet match from the 90s (eg the much lauded Becker/Sampras matches) and compare to watching a carpet match from the 70s or 80s to see the difference in pace. They were serving way harder and faster and ripping way more winners with the modern racquets compared to the wood/aluminum racquets. I am pretty sure they never had the ability to "slow down" carpet (it was usually just a super cheap turf), so the only difference would be the racquets and the players. The weight and feel of the racquet enabled more RPMs which allowed harder shots to stay in, and this was before poly. This helps both serves and groundstrokes, but hurts the volley. That's why the 70s and 80s S&Vers that won slams were generally volley-dominant players, and the 90s/2000s S&Vers that won slams were serve-dominant players, with the sole exception of Rafter (I'd put Edberg as neither serve nor volley-dominant but his career ended very early in the 90s).
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Don't forget Tiger Tim Henman.

Edberg is arguably the greatest volleyer of all time, certainly the best backhand volley of all time. Why would you say he isn't volley dominant?
 
TTMR said:
Lol no. Mischa and Andy never had to play on ultra fast bad bouncing courts with wood racquets. They had a lot of "privileges" that JMac and his contemporaries never had.

We can never know how players would have evolved if they were born at a different time.
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Oh, sorry. Is mistake.
 
It would be interesting to research the origin of serve and volley. Was it developed due to an inability to play steady points from the baseline, and someone realizing it was far more beneficial to finish points up front?
 
Herald said:
It would be interesting to research the origin of serve and volley. Was it developed due to an inability to play steady points from the baseline, and someone realizing it was far more beneficial to finish points up front?
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I think I saw a documentary on tennis that it happened well over a hundred years ago that a nobleman playing just started the tactic of volleying the ball on his own since there was no rule against it! It took a while, but with grass being the main court to play on, it only made sense for other to start doing the same! :unsure: ;):whistle::laughing:
 
TTMR said:
I think people place too much emphasis on the "slowing down of the courts", and even poly strings.

We know that tennis players, on average are better than ever. Nutrition, exercise, training, commitment, are all much higher than they used to be. But it's also the case that tennis minds now incorporate rudimentary knowledge of physics and mechanics for producing optimal strokes, and utilize video for optimal strategies in learning "what works". Bollieterri revolutionized the game by training players in optimization and honing out inefficient, diverse techniques. It took time for the old guard to die out, but they did some time in the early to mid-2000s. But we know even by then, S&V was a failing strategy, that lost more often than it won. Safin and Hewitt decimated S&Vers as a matter of course. Fed had to abandon the technique to become dominant.

There were once bizarre things you could do and still be a top player. You could have a Borg half one hand half two hand push release backhand. You could have an all-wrist continental McEnroe forehand. You could have a Michael Chang serve. Those things were low-hanging fruit that subsequent players could easily exploit, hence you don't see them anymore. S&V was mid-hanging fruit, but evolution has tapped it out.
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Have you read Craig O'Shannessy's take on S&V? if yes, your thoughts on them would be interesting, if not, I recommend you look for it (his his site)
 
As long as there's someone on tour with an overwhelming serve, a long reach, good volley skills ... where their serve produces weak returns consistently enough from their opponent, serve and volley will be a weapon to use. It can always be used as a surprise weapon in a tactical situation, of course. Slower courts, better control oriented strings (poly), better technique as the OP mentioned has all lead to a better return game / more consistent passing shots so it's much harder these days to have consistently overpowering serve. One outcome is for sure, though. The "all court" game is still there. It's not all from the baseline. The GOATS games are "all court" games. I think we see this in the serve + 1 tactics quite frequently.
 
Fiero425 said:
I think I saw a documentary on tennis that it happened well over a hundred years ago that a nobleman playing just started the tactic of volleying the ball on his own since there was no rule against it! It took a while, but with grass being the main court to play on, it only made sense for other to start doing the same! :unsure: ;):whistle::laughing:
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Perhaps @Spencer Gore brought this tactic into our tennis vocabulary
 
Fiero425 said:
I think I saw a documentary on tennis that it happened well over a hundred years ago that a nobleman playing just started the tactic of volleying the ball on his own since there was no rule against it! It took a while, but with grass being the main court to play on, it only made sense for other to start doing the same! :unsure: ;):whistle::laughing:
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This is almost certainly how it began (later with Spencer Gore adapting and employing it at the highest competition levels at the time).

When you have inconsistently manufactured racquets, inconsistently manufactured balls, and inconsistently bouncing courts, finishing the point with as few shots and bounces as possible is the best strategy to victory.

Efficiency killed S&V and diversity in tennis. Efficient manufacturing, efficient landscaping processes and machinery, efficient diet and training and efficient strategizing.

Honestly, the same phenomenon has happened in other sports, and to society in general. A certain magic has been lost through this mass systematization.
 
BeatlesFan said:
OP claims S&V was "mid-hanging fruit, but evolution has tapped it out."

When in fact Mac had more talent by far than any current player and watching he and Edberg at net was incredibly entertaining. Nobody is good enough to volley anymore. Even Fed was never in the league of Becker, Rafter or Pete, much less Mac and Stefan.
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Yeah. I think that especially Mac had a talent never seen later. Reaction times way way faster than anybody else. I sometimes wondered if he has some kind of genetic advantage on reaction time. And volley are in general not anymore TRAINED properly. Thus new players are by far not at the same level at the net.
 
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It's not obsolete and used quite frequently still. R&V as well.

I swear every time I see a stupid thread it's by TTMR.
 
If anything I feel like the defensive baseliner has been figured out to an extent and you're seeing a return, if not to outright S&V to all court play with tactical net finishes and occasional SV and requiring more attacking to get big wins
 
Lehecka would have had more success vs. Djokovic yesterday if Leheka choose to serve-volley more 8-B
Lehecka kept missing the most basic shots from the baseline, so the less he hung around the baseline the better!
And he serve-volleyed in the 3rd Set and it went to a tiebreaker.
 
aus89 said:
If anything I feel like the defensive baseliner has been figured out to an extent and you're seeing a return, if not to outright S&V to all court play with tactical net finishes and occasional SV and requiring more attacking to get big wins
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The extinction of S&V led to Medvedev leading the tour in return stats a few years ago by standing 30 feet behind the baseline.
 
smalahove said:
S&V is a high risk, high reward tactic.
Imo, the main reason we don't see much S&V, is that most top players just aren't good enough when it comes to net play, and especially the mid court, transition volley. And most players are so fast, that any volley that isn't placed to a tee, will be a lost point. This is obvious when you see the top players at the net in doubles; they just lack the skillset to (judge and) execute the correct shot, and most of the time.
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Agree there are less truly skilled s&v players. But things happen for a reason and there is no debate that more powerful rackets, and perhaps poly strings even more, fundamentally shifted the balance of risk/reward on coming to net. very little added advantage to volleying, enormous new opportunities for returns and passes. doesn't matter how 'good' you are at volleying if a player has the means to put the ball in a place you simply can't reach.
 
gfwp said:
Yeah. I think that especially Mac had a talent never seen later. Reaction times way way faster than anybody else. I sometimes wondered if he has some kind of genetic advantage on reaction time. And volley are in general not anymore TRAINED properly. Thus new players are by far not at the same level at the net.
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This is crazy. You try facing a return from one of those racquets when Mac was at his peak and compare it to a return from one of these things they play with now, and it's not remotely the same thing.

Like, maybe he had an advantage compared to everyone from those days, but comparing it to the game today makes no sense.

Volleys don't need to be trained today properly because you get one of those racquets on the ball and it'll basically do the job for you. In those days, you just get a racquet on the ball and it's not going anywhere.

Point being that while 80% of the skill is gone from the game, reaction time is still something you most definitely still need.
 
chjtennis said:
Speeding up the court will bring another problem which is the speed of serve getting obscenely fast. For that reason, I don't expect we'll see court speed going up in the future with giant, powerful modern players on tour, thus S&V will remain as rarity.
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Pity someone didn't choose to make Courts of moderate speed.

Slowing down the courts radically from the early 2000's was a overreaction to servers like Goran. The problem is that they went to the extreme of slowing things down to the point that most courts are slow now, and even Wimbledon could only be considered a medium speed surface now. Surely a better decision would have been, rather than overreacting, they should have slowed down to moderate speed rather that very slow. But it seems that very slow won the day.
 
S&V is not obsolete. The good servers are just more selective when they come in. It's still a good skill to have.
As good as Mac was at it, he didn't when every point doing it. He just needed to win 51% of them.
 
timnz said:
Pity someone didn't choose to make Courts of moderate speed.

Slowing down the courts radically from the early 2000's was a overreaction to servers like Goran. The problem is that they went to the extreme of slowing things down to the point that most courts are slow now, and even Wimbledon could only be considered a medium speed surface now. Surely a better decision would have been, rather than overreacting, they should have slowed down to moderate speed rather that very slow. But it seems that very slow won the day.
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With fast court speed, we can have more unexpected results. I think it may not be a coincidence the homogenization of courts and dominance by Big 4 happened around the same time. This kind of dominance has never been seen before. Even Sampras at Wimbledon was upset by Krajicek - make no mistake, Richard was a formidable player on grass with his powerful serve and volley - and there used to be way more upsets in the past eras. It would be good to have courts of different characteristics again in the future.
 
chjtennis said:
With fast court speed, we can have more unexpected results. I think it may not be a coincidence the homogenization of courts and dominance by Big 4 happened around the same time. This kind of dominance has never been seen before. Even Sampras at Wimbledon was upset by Krajicek - make no mistake, Richard was a formidable player on grass with his powerful serve and volley - and there used to be way more upsets in the past eras. It would be good to have courts of different characteristics again in the future.
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I'd like to see:

Wimbledon: back to the faster grass. All players must wear a white one-sy. Also, add in weed incense sticks to slow down players.
Roland Garros: keep as is. Winner has to make a clay scupture of themselves and bake it.
US Open: fast hardcourt. Fans allowed to heckle by hitting pickleballs at the players (using pickleball padels)
Australian Open: slow hardcourt in gladiator-type arena with crocodiles, kangaroos, and poisonous snakes roaming on the court and courtside.
 
gfwp said:
Yeah. I think that especially Mac had a talent never seen later. Reaction times way way faster than anybody else. I sometimes wondered if he has some kind of genetic advantage on reaction time. And volley are in general not anymore TRAINED properly. Thus new players are by far not at the same level at the net.
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Current players are more athletic than ever! Do you think Sampras or Edberg could move as Carlos? No, nope!
 
onehandbh said:
I'd like to see:

Wimbledon: back to the faster grass. All players must wear a white one-sy. Also, add in weed incense sticks to slow down players.
Roland Garros: keep as is. Winner has to make a clay scupture of themselves and bake it.
US Open: fast hardcourt. Fans allowed to heckle by hitting pickleballs at the players (using pickleball padels)
Australian Open: slow hardcourt in gladiator-type arena with crocodiles, kangaroos, and poisonous snakes roaming on the court and courtside.
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Typical fast-slow surfaces bias!
 
onehandbh said:
I'd like to see:

Wimbledon: back to the faster grass. All players must wear a white one-sy. Also, add in weed incense sticks to slow down players.
Roland Garros: keep as is. Winner has to make a clay scupture of themselves and bake it.
US Open: fast hardcourt. Fans allowed to heckle by hitting pickleballs at the players (using pickleball padels)
Australian Open: slow hardcourt in gladiator-type arena with crocodiles, kangaroos, and poisonous snakes roaming on the court and courtside.
Click to expand...
You just described the Aussie fans in the stands.
 
mental midget said:
Agree there are less truly skilled s&v players. But things happen for a reason and there is no debate that more powerful rackets, and perhaps poly strings even more, fundamentally shifted the balance of risk/reward on coming to net. very little added advantage to volleying, enormous new opportunities for returns and passes. doesn't matter how 'good' you are at volleying if a player has the means to put the ball in a place you simply can't reach.
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Every level of play above 3.5 has excellent passing shots. It is silly how easily a 4.5 can pass on a poor approach shot or misplaced volley.
 
gfwp said:
Yeah. I think that especially Mac had a talent never seen later. Reaction times way way faster than anybody else. I sometimes wondered if he has some kind of genetic advantage on reaction time.
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McEnroe's reaction time was likely a genetic advantage; that cannot be taught.

And volley are in general not anymore TRAINED properly. Thus new players are by far not at the same level at the net.
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The majority of the past two generations of male players are astoundingly incompetent in any S&V discipline. Most of their attempts to ever leave the baseline to try anything other than that one-dimensional game are clumsy and laughable at best, and that includes the most overrated "young" player today.

SonnyT said:
Current players are more athletic than ever! Do you think Sampras or Edberg could move as Carlos? No, nope!
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Alcaraz is a hippo moving in tar compared to the athleticism of Sampras and Edberg--the former a once-in-a-generation talent.
 
Serve and volley is dead. Do you see how strong and fast the athletes have become? Along with huge spin possible.

It's from the bygone era.
 
TTMR said:
I think people place too much emphasis on the "slowing down of the courts", and even poly strings.

We know that tennis players, on average are better than ever.
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We do?
Most of the current field seems rather one-dimensional to me.
But you’re right: maybe they are just much better at being one-dimensional.
 
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Top seed junior player Jan Kumstat did some S & V to beat crowd's favourite Cruz Hewitt in straight sets. It's good to see proactive players like Jan Kumstat, not afraid of coming to the net to finish points.
 
THUNDERVOLLEY said:
McEnroe's reaction time was likely a genetic advantage; that cannot be taught.



The majority of the past two generations of male players are astoundingly incompetent in any S&V discipline. Most of their attempts to ever leave the baseline to try anything other than that one-dimensional game are clumsy and laughable at best, and that includes the most overrated "young" player today.



Alcaraz is a hippo moving in tar compared to the athleticism of Sampras and Edberg--the former a once-in-a-generation talent.
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Take away Sampras’ serve and witness mediocracy. He would never hold up to Alcaraz in terms of athleticism. Edberg might, though.
 
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BumElbow said:
Speed up the courts to make S&V relevant again. I'm bored watching baseline match after baseline match. The courts are too slow.
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The courts are not that slow. The balls are.

But they got slow for the very reason that people didn't want to watch people serve...
 
On fast courts like indoors, a high % of sets have no breaks already and go to tiebreakers or have one late break and end at 7-5. If they didn’t slow down the courts, there would be very limited breaks of serves as the serves are too big now plus +1 shots are very efficient point-enders.

On faster courts, they are using balls that fluff up a lot to make the conditions slower and have some rallies. The taller, more muscular players helped by poly are hitting and serving so hard that old court speeds and thin-felt fast balls are not viable anymore on the ATP to see long rallies and service breaks. 70% of points end within the Return+1 shot and the % is not much lower even on clay.

I like today’s tennis and have no wish to ban poly or go to slower surfaces.
 
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