The one bounce serve and volley

[egn]

So bored and looking for the head to heads of Pancho vs Sedgmen on their pro tours I wound up on Pancho Gonzales' wikipedia page which I knew was going to be useless however I came across an interesting piece of info that I had completely forgotten. So apparently there was a point in time Pancho's serve and volley game was so dominate that they actually changed the pro rules for serving players to have to wait for the ball to bounce before they could hit their next shot. Now I was wondering first if anyone could confirm this and second out of the following more modern day players which would be the best under these new rules..The choices are the following

Pete Sampras
Boris Becker
Stefan Edberg
John McEnroe


The big 4 serve and volley guys of the open era basically. Who would be the best? Also who would suffer the most?

Best I feel would be Sampras, he had one of the best half volley's ever in my opinion and the one who suffer the most I am going to say is Edberg. Just because Edberg was all about that perfect touch and using his huge kick serve to propel him into the net practically. McEnroe would do fine and Becker I feel the same.

--Note: That says something though for the craziness of Pancho's serve and volley techniques.

 

[pc1]

Jack Kramer and Pancho Segura had a competition like that for three matches. Segura was complaining that if Kramer didn't have his great serve that Segura would beat him so they also had the one bounce matches. Kramer says he won the best of three but it made for great tennis.

Problem with the one bounce is that the great server is probably still controlling the rally anyway.

Of the four top players, I would think McEnroe and Sampras would do the best. Pete would get a lot of weak returns which he could drive with his super forehand for winners or just control the rally. Same with McEnroe.

I'm not sure who would be third between Becker and Edberg. I would tend to think Becker would be third because his serve would still get a lot of weak returns which he could drive with his forehand and overall Boris had more groundstroke power than Edberg. However Edberg still had super approach shots and his serve wasn't bad either and Edberg had a superior volley.

 

[joe sch]

Interesting consideration. Also consider to limit the dominating serves of Kramer and Gonzales, the no jump on serve rule was also a rule for a period of time. I agree that Sampras and Becker would have been most dominant with these rules of the great late SV'ers since they had the biggest serves and great half vollies. Edberg relied more on his great speed and jump to pickoff his big kicker serves. BTW, that one bounce rule is basically how most allcourt players play today, very few real SV'ers and more agressive allcourt players looking for weak returns to pounce on and close at the net.