Grass-court tennis eh? A bit boring? Just serve and volley, ace, serve and volley? Well not any more. And sometimes old-style serve-return, bish-bosh, really did get a bit tedious. Go on, admit it. Obscure studies by people with a bit too much time on their hands proved that once you’ve factored in breaks between games, towelling down, or getting ready to bounce balls, top grass-court players would only spend four or five minutes per hour actually playing tennis. Very definitely not any more. Do you know how many times Rafa Nadal served and volleyed in that quite extraordinary, thunderously brilliant epic of epics in the gloom of SW19 last month? Just once, in the last game of the final set.
What’s happened of course is the game has changed. Huge technical advances in stringing and racket sizes have meant that players can return serve with much greater accuracy. And the ultimate physical evolution of the tennis player as supreme baseline athlete is Nadal.
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