For more than 50 years, through the last half of the 20th century, the volley played the lead role in tennis’s premier drama, Wimbledon. On the slick grass courts of the All England Club, a ball struck in the air skidded low and fast.
Volleys that landed deep into the court rushed opponents, forcing them to hit difficult passing shots from compromised positions. Volleys that fell short — a staple of Bjorn Borg’s run of five straight titles from 1976 to 1980 — were also lethal, caressed into closure on the velvet lawn. Compounding this was the rather moody comportment of the grass. Bounces were erratic, so why even let them happen?
Roy Emerson, twice the Wimbledon men’s singles champion (1964-65), played the tournament in his teens, 20s and 30s. Not once, Emerson said, does he recall ever serving and not coming forward to the net on either his first or second serve.
He was hardly an aberration; other titlists such as Billie Jean King, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and Pete Sampras were all committed net-rushers. As recently as 2003, the year Roger Federer won the first of his eight Wimbledon singles titles, he served and volleyed on 48 percent of his service points.
But in the 21st century, this tactic has become far less prevalent. On the men’s side, figures compiled by the strategist Craig O’Shannessy reveal that serve-and-volley points fell to 1,980 in 2018 (6.93 percent of total serve points), down from 9,168 in 2002 (32.6 percent). By the time Federer won his seventh title, in 2012, he served-and-volleyed less than 10 percent of the time.
Women served and volleyed four times less at Wimbledon in 2018 than in 2002. And as serve-volley efforts have dropped, so has net-rushing over all (among men, from 11,302 times in 2002 to 7,952 in 2018).
Four decades of developments triggered the volley’s decline. Before the early 1970s, the one-handed backhand — preferred by an overwhelming majority of players — could rarely apply enough speed, precision or spin to trouble a volleyer. But the ascent of the two-handers Jimmy Connors, Chris Evert and Borg, who from 1974 and 1982 collectively won 10 Wimbledon singles titles, began to turn the tables.
“The quality of service returns and passing shots improved significantly,” said Tim Mayotte, a six-time Wimbledon quarterfinalist in the ’80s who was known for his forehand volley. “Everything from power to direction to recovery to the two-handed backhand topspin lob added a whole other dimension.”
In May 1999, 43 of the top 100 male players in the world hit their backhands with one hand. As of June 2019, there were 15. According to Mark Kovacs, a sports science consultant and tennis coach, “Most players used to have a weaker side, usually the backhand. And the two-handed backhand changed that completely. It doesn’t give you a spot you can hit to.”
Equipment changes also reduced the impact of the volley. Wood rackets, with 65-inch hitting areas, made it difficult to generate the kind of whiplike topspin necessary to dip the ball at the volleyer’s feet. Graphite rackets — lighter, lively and with head sizes as big as 110 inches — arrived in the ’80s, making it much easier to hit powerful ground strokes.
By the ’90s, a new string, Luxilon, heralded another volley-hostile dimension.
“The strings took ground strokes to a new level,” said Gigi Fernandez, a four-time winner of the Wimbledon ladies’ doubles title. “When I was playing you faced pace, but if you had good volley technique, you could often deal with that. But now, you have pace and spin. No matter where you volley, you’re volleying below the level of the net.”
Said Kovacs, “the passing shot is like a very fast curveball.”
Wimbledon further hurt the volley in 2002, when a new variation of the longstanding grass surface was planted. The result was both a more consistent bounce and a slower court. Not once in that year’s men’s final between Lleyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian did either player come to net on his serve.
Amid all these developments that have aided the counterattack, net-rushing has become an incidental tactic. And yet through all the changes that have blunted the volley, the success rate for net-rushing has remained at least 60 percent and often even higher. At this year’s French Open final, for example, Rafael Nadal came to net 27 times and won 23 of those points. The women’s champ in Paris, Ashleigh Barty, was 15 of 20 in her final round victory. Surely, these figures would encourage aspiring players.
Alas, just as penmanship and slide rules have largely been left in the dust in classrooms, the volley also has been marginalized.
“No one teaches them proper volley grips or where to stand for the volley or how to practice it, which makes sense given that a great many people teaching today hardly volleyed, either,” Emerson said. “To become good at volleying, you’ve got to learn it from a young age. Not just the technique, but how to be comfortable in that area, accept the fact that you’re going to be passed a few times and grasp the concept of applying cumulative pressure.
“So what happens now is that someone comes up to net once or twice early, loses a point and decides it’s not worth doing. But the point is to apply pressure throughout the entire match. And on big points, late in a set or match, it’s not so easy to hit those passing shots.”
But the ceaseless net attack of Emerson’s time is long gone. Pros now treat the volley more selectively. Keen to win Wimbledon, the young Nadal saw that he would have to enhance his attrition-based clay-court game and learn to become a better volleyer.
Like Borg, another clay-court savant, Nadal has become a master of the volley dropped short into the court, a deft touch that has helped him win two Wimbledon singles titles and reach the finals three other times. Novak Djokovic, the defending men’s singles champion, is also proficient at the net (oddly enough, though, Djokovic can get tight on the net-rusher’s companion shot, the overhead).
Other proficient volleyers include the seven-time Wimbledon singles champion Serena Williams, the five-time winner Venus Williams, Anastasija Sevastova and Milos Raonic, the 2016 Wimbledon singles runner-up.
But even those players typically pave their way to the net with an extremely powerful approach shot or serve. That is how, for example, such powerful Americans as the 6-foot-10 John Isner and the 6-foot-11 Reilly Opelka usually arrive at the net. This makes sense given how little attention many players pay to sharpening volley technique and deployment.
“You watch a pro practice,” Fernandez said, “and they’ll spend 90 minutes at the baseline and 10 minutes on the volley.”
Barty and Federer are arguably the most skilled female and male volleyers, likely because these two embraced the shot from a young age. As children, each revered the all-court brand of tennis played by a pair of two-time Wimbledon champions.
While Barty admired the play of a fellow Australian, Evonne Goolagong, who won in 1971 and 1980, Federer was smitten with the silky-smooth Swedish net rusher Stefan Edberg, who won in 1988 and 1990 and who would become Federer’s coach. Expect to see Barty and Federer at the net frequently during Wimbledon, showcasing the kind of volley technique and deployment — deep, crisp, short, angled, feathered — that would please such classic practitioners as Emerson, Mayotte and Fernandez.
As for the future of the volley, even in a baseline-dominated era, experts hold hope.
“You see guys standing far back to return, or slicing their returns, and that’s just an open invitation for a volleyer,” Mayotte said. “Everyone talks about the game of today and how it’s all won by the baseliner. But the point isn’t to always teach today’s game. The way you build a better player is to teach the game of tomorrow.”
