Not quite extinct, but odds heavily stacked against serve and volleyers
Dustin Brown’s audacious attempt to unseat defending Wimbledon champion Andy Murray with a show-boating brand of serve and volley tennis was always likely to end in failure. And it did.
The crowd warmed to the dreadlocked German though, especially those pining for the days when grasscourt tennis really was grasscourt tennis and volleying was revered.
These days serve and volleyers are regarded as novelty attractions in a sport dominated by players more than happy to win back at the baseline.
It’s a far cry from the days when net-rushing turf warriors like John McEnroe, Boris Becker and Pete Sampras left the baselines alone and chewed up the zone around the service boxes.
There are still players prepared to gamble though -- which is how Germany’s Mischa Zverev describes his serve and volley game that bamboozled Murray at this year’s Australian Open. “It’s like flipping a coin 200 times a day and then hopefully you win the majority of those coin tosses,” the German 27th seed said.
There are multiple reasons, it appears, that only a handful of players -- Zverev, giant Croatian Ivo Karlovic, Luxembourg lefthander Gilles Muller, Queen’s Club champion Feliciano Lopez and Ukraine’s Sergiy Stakhovsky -- are serve and volleying.
In 2002, when critics decried the shortness of the rallies, Wimbledon switched to a harderwearing rye grass.
The result was less skid, and higher more trustworthy bounce -- giving baseliners crucial extra time to line up their passing shots.
Slower balls, enhanced strings -- offering more spin and control -- and the fact that modern groundstrokes have become so deadly are also contributory factors.