During Wimbledon’s second week, the grass once told a story: bald patches at the baseline from defensive play, and a worn path to the net, where players rushed after their serve to finish with a volley.
Those days are gone—perhaps with the modification of the grass mix sown at the All England Club, or the evolution of racquets, and certainly with the change in playing style. Today’s players can pass brilliantly from the back of the court, but they are no longer as confident at the net. Grass courts, once a haven for serve-and-volley, are now rare. The era when Grand Slams in Melbourne and New York were played on grass is long gone.
The New Yorkers switched to hard courts as early as the mid-1970s, after nearly a century on grass and a three-year transitional period on greenish American clay. The final grass-court edition marked a farewell to the ‘old school,’ as 22-year-old Jimmy Connors decisively defeated 40-year-old Ken Rosewall, one of Australia’s great champions. Rosewall had begun his career mostly from the back of the court but, as he aged, mastered the serve-and-volley style, which most likely allowed him to remain competitive at the highest level for so long.
Happily, the rise of Connors or Borg did not prove the death knell of the volley—in the decades that followed, there were still Swedes, Frenchmen, Americans, and Australians who knew what to do and how.
Australians clung to grass courts longer than Americans, with Melbourne switching to hard courts in the late 1980s. As a nod to tradition, the Australian Open later redesigned its logo to feature a serving player—rumored to be modeled on Stefan Edberg, a master of the net. Anyone who remembers the three Wimbledon finals from 1988–1990, when the Swede faced Germany’s Boris Becker, knows exactly what that means. The switch away from grass in Melbourne was especially bittersweet, as the entire Australian tennis school, dominant from the 1950s onward, had been built on constant forward movement. That was the way Rod Laver played in the 1960s, John Newcombe in the ’70s, Pat Cash in the ’80s, and Patrick Rafter in the ’90s, to name just a few. Of course, each decade had its great baseliners, but the sight of a player charging the net immediately after serve was not, as it is today, a rarity (even on artificial surfaces).
We don’t mean to complain about “modern times,” though. Rather, in our volley-loving hearts we quietly hope that one day a player will emerge who masters this difficult skill to such a degree that Alcaraz or Sinner won’t be able to pass him so easily. To be fair, both of them can play superbly at the net—just not usually as part of a serve-and-volley approach.
In women’s tennis, the matter is even trickier. Beyond Martina Navratilova, Jana Novotná, Justine Henin, or Amélie Mauresmo, it’s hard to recall many who regularly and effectively used the serve-and-volley tactic. Here, we must admit, our faith in the chances of stylistic variety is rather faint.
And yet, a spark of hope remains, because matches between contrasting styles are often the most exciting. Think, for example—returning to men’s tennis—of the Ivan Lendl vs. John McEnroe rivalry (21–15 in favor of the baseliner; though we should note that Lendl made titanic efforts to master the net game in his bid to win Wimbledon—unsuccessfully), or Pete Sampras vs. Andre Agassi (20–14 in favor of the volleyer). Or even the clashes in the 1940s between Americans Jack Kramer—sometimes credited as a pioneer of the serve-and-volley—and Bobby Riggs, a versatile player though not particularly powerful. Kramer later admitted that it was precisely the need to handle Riggs’s clever play that pushed him into attacking the net consistently. Perhaps similar thoughts will dawn on modern players as well. There are some promising candidates—take American Ben Shelton, whose coach and father wasn’t half bad at the volley himself.
And what about us—our clumsy, amateur-level tennis? Can a good volley help here too? We believe it can. Many of us often face opponents with a clear weakness on one side—usually the backhand. In such cases, instead of grinding out long rallies from the baseline, one can employ a brilliant tactic: hit to the backhand and head straight for the net.
Bartosz Klimas
