24/06/2012 08:05 CEST - Rassegna Internazionale

McEnroe: "Spero che il serve and volley ritorni" (The Guardian)

A quiet debate is raging, from the locker room to the commentary box: will we ever again see the high-risk beauty of serve-and-volley tennis?

The players very much doubt it. The old lags who still have their wooden rackets packed away in the loft doubt it too, but one or two of them live in hope. John McEnroe, for instance. He says administrators killed serve-and-volley with big sweet-spot rackets, slow courts and heavy balls when the game tired of the quick-fire bazooka tennis of the 90s.

McEnroe acknowledges that if that style of tennis – or at least an approximation of it – ever returns, it surely will be at Wimbledon, the spiritual home of the game and scene of so many memorable bang-dash-chip-lob skirmishes in the days before players became rooted to the baseline.

Before he gears up for his annual stint behind the BBC microphone, he shares his fears and hopes for the game. Is the future a one-dimensional jungle full of beasts who can run all day and hit all night? "I wouldn't make that leap," he says. "It's difficult to say what's going to happen. They may change a rule and do something with the strings, for all we know."

Andy Murray counters the rush to blame technology for the changes in the game. He thinks tactics have evolved from the pace, power and fitness of the players. "All of the ex-players like to use the strings as an excuse for why guys are [playing deep]. Luxilon, the string that I use as well as gut, I've been using for about 15 years. Guys were still serving and volleying 15 years ago, but the game changed. It has nothing to do with the strings because guys can still choose to use gut if they want to. Everyone's just so much faster. The game's too quick to serve and volley now. It's too hard."

McEnroe at least agrees they are better athletes. "Back in my day if you played a guy who was 6ft 6in, if you moved the guy and got it low, [you would be] in good shape. Now, you notice even [John] Isner serves and stays back most of the time. I wonder what he'll do on grass? The guy is 6ft 9in with a serve like that and he may not serve-and-volley on both serves, and may not come in every time on his first serve. Can you imagine that? Did you ever think in your wildest dreams that you'd be watching Wimbledon with everybody staying back on their serve on the men's side? … I just don't know what the future holds."

As much as he admires the players who dominate from the back, with their iron-wristed ground strokes and lung-busting stamina, he sees hope in turning a pure athlete into an out-and-out tennis player. He imagines a composite genius, a Michael Jordan figure: big, athletic, artful. "Jordan is our version of Nadal-Djokovic-Federer combined. But imagine taking the way that Djokovic moves and make him 6ft 6in. Right now these guys like [Juan Martín] Del Potro are doing much better. Tomas Berdych, he's a good athlete but he's not at that level. That would be scary if you saw that – and that guy might come in a lot more."

While we're waiting for this new superman, tennis has three of the finest players to grace the game in Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. They may not glide towards the net behind a killer serve like Pete Sampras did, but, because they are so fit, they bring innovation in the shot that few thought possible until recently.

"Nadal … how the hell can a guy hit a backhand like that, off his back foot, looping behind?" McEnroe asks, describing how the Spaniard shifts muscle and bone almost in defiance of medical science and gravity. It is born in the gym, consummated at a crucial point in a match.

"Now people are studying that backhand and practising it; they're saying that is how I have to hit a backhand.

"If you can slide that beautifully, where you stop right there and you push off that foot and you have that extra hand to give that power, that is actually better than a one-hander. If a little kid asked me now whether to have a one- or two-hand backhand, I would teach him volleying skills but I would say it is better to have a two-hander. That shot alone is a killer.

"Guys like [Andre] Agassi, who had an incredible backhand, you never saw him slide into a ball and go off the back foot and hit it like that. Now you see our two best players in the world do that. It is unbelievable and it is very difficult."

McEnroe adds: "Serve-and-volley is not impossible. The right person would dominate on a fast court. If [Milos] Raonic becomes even more like a Sampras … if you saw him go big on his forehand against Federer in the Davis Cup – and return better – the guy is so dangerous. People hate playing that, it would be a nightmare, every shot becomes more important.

"At the moment, players are better side to side than they are moving forward, but it does not mean that someone cannot be taught. Their natural instincts are to move forward."

That was always the delicious gamble of serve-and-volley. As McEnroe recalls, Sampras didn't always get it right. "Pete would go for two or three games where he would miss a fair amount of returns and suddenly click in. Then the pressure is on suddenly when he hits a return winner and makes you hit a tough shot and you are tight. That's what these top four guys do today: they make you hit a lot of tough shots but, if they don't hit a lot of shots themselves, they get frustrated.

"[Michaël] Llodra could unsettle people by coming in. [Opponents] are not used to it. Someone will do it … but I don't know who – or when it will happen."