It's time to speed things up, it really is

First topic message reminder :

David Ferrer, the ironman of tennis who cycles 90 miles per day through winter as training gets cramp today after lung bursting ralleys where neither man could hit winners due to retrieval and ralleying qualities in a 2.5 hr match that was just 3 sets.

During the match, Roddick, Karlovic, Darren Cahill and others tweeted:

ARod: I've seen everything now.... David ferrer cramping. I thought they would find Hoffa first
ARod: Conditions too slow...Guys dying playing 3 sets. So slow. Makes it impossible to hit winners which results in messed up winners/errors ratio

Karlovic: Men and women play with different balls. Men much slower balls...
Karlovic: Court and balls in Miami are too slow to play entertaining tennis. There is no winners, just unforced errors.
Karlovic: Playing on clay this week. Finally some faster courts..

Cahill: I take that 5 set final idea back. 3 sets of that style of tennis on these slow hard-courts is plenty. Well done to Muzza

Gilbert: Great effort from the Muzzard to get it done Winning Ugly
Gilbert: I have never seen Little beast Ferrerrr cramp in a 3 set match

Sergiy Stakhovsky : Ferrer & Murray both 0 aces in 3 sets..does that says something about the speed of the court & balls???

How many more pros does it take to complain about low quality and grind-fests before something is done! What do you think? Its been often cited that the 90's Wimbledon matches between Ivanisevic and Sampras, particularly the 94 Final, jump started this whole process of slowing down conditions towards surface homogenization. ATP have sat back seeing racquets get bigger, strings stiffer, balls larger and surfaces slower...and done nothing whilst ralleys have got longer and longer. All they have done is to reign in the 25s rule when conditions ate getting interminable. It smacks of rearranging deck chairs on the proverbial...

Do low quality, grind-fest matches like Murray-Ferrer (and even Djokovic-Murray, Nadal-Djokovic) prove that the ITF/ATP/WTA need to seriously consider speeding up some of the ridiculously slow conditions on tour such as AO, IW, Miami, etc, to bring back some much needed surface variety and hence balance? If not we're just going to get even more counterpunch ping-pong grind-fest finals on slow-as-treacle hardcourts - on clay ok, it's a surface that is challenging for movement and point building, but not on hard court where sliding movement is restricted and conditions even slower and high bouncing. What gives...

Faster courts will bring reward those with a controlled aggressive game. Current conditions favour more cautious defensive play which is pretty much the standard across about 90% of the tour events!

If we sped up Wimbledon and the events surrounding them up until the US Open that is what about 3 months of fast courts? I don't think that is asking much now it is given that beyond September you could mix things up. Paris can do with a tweek. Speed up Shanghai, keep Paris a tad slow and maybe speed up the WTF. Keep the players on their toes.

Variation in the surface speeds will open up all events to all talents

legendkillarV2 wrote:Current conditions favour more cautious defensive play which is pretty much the standard across about 90% of the tour events!

LK, I agree with the general thrust of your comments (and indeed this thread) but this is something that I hear quite regularly that I think is wide of the mark.

Slower courts make defending easier but I don't think we can say they favour cautious defensive play.

Look at the current top ten. I would argue that Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Berdych, Del Potro and Tsonga are agressive players. Murray, Gasquet and Tipsarevic are often agressive but are sometimes too cautious. It's only Ferrer who I would say leans more frequently on the defensive game.

We can debate the various definitions above but I think overwhelmingly the greatest success is coming to the agressive players, even on the slower surfaces.

But yes, it would be good if there were a few more faster tournaments that made it less risky to be aggressive.

Bring back wood!

HM Murdoch wrote:

legendkillarV2 wrote:Current conditions favour more cautious defensive play which is pretty much the standard across about 90% of the tour events!

LK, I agree with the general thrust of your comments (and indeed this thread) but this is something that I hear quite regularly that I think is wide of the mark.

Slower courts make defending easier but I don't think we can say they favour cautious defensive play.

Look at the current top ten. I would argue that Djokovic, Federer, Nadal, Berdych, Del Potro and Tsonga are agressive players. Murray, Gasquet and Tipsarevic are often agressive but are sometimes too cautious. It's only Ferrer who I would say leans more frequently on the defensive game.

We can debate the various definitions above but I think overwhelmingly the greatest success is coming to the agressive players, even on the slower surfaces.

But yes, it would be good if there were a few more faster tournaments that made it less risky to be aggressive.

Bring back wood!

See I disagree. It favours the counter punching defensive player. It does in my opinion. Players can get away with quite average shots because:

A) Strings are forgiving and short balls can even bewilder the best of players.
B) The surface speed allows players to retreive the cleanest of winners and still retain court position.
C) Players just wear each other out on the baseline and hence most matches are not blessed with clean winners and more points if anything decided by lengthy point construction.

That for more favours the defensive player. Look at Djokovic. 2011 was just a brute in every sense and was able to apply an array of styles both defensive, aggressive and mix of both. 2012 onwards and he has gone into more defence based play. Yes success has favoured aggressive players, but at a cost.

2010 - Nadal won 3 Slams. Following year only managed 1
2011 - Djokovic won 3 Slams. Following year only managed 1

So for me you can see that actually being aggressive takes a lot of energy and is totally unsustainable for long periods of time. It is not that Djokovic or Nadal are bad players, it is just physically impossible to maintain high levels of attacking tennis year in year out if the core strength of such players is endurance based and not so reliant on talent of ball striking.

HM murdoch. Out of the players in the top 10 you mentioned who are attacking, sorry but I would take out djoko and nadal. For me they are not aggressive players at all.
To quote joey from friends (ish):
"You are so far behind the baseline, you can't even see the baseline, the baseline looks like a dot to you!"

LK, interesting. I see it totally differently!

With regard to your point about Nadal and Djokovic, I think there are other reasons for their 'weaker' second year.

In Nadal's case it was simply an opponent in the form of his life. Nadal was still making the big finals, he just couldn't overcome Djokovic.

In Djokovic's case it was a slight drop off in form coupled with some narrow margins that previously had worked in his favour now going against him. But like Nadal's follow up year, he was still making big finals.

But I don't think either player became more defensive in their approach.

I think some faster courts would have two main effects:

1) Greater chance of upsets. A lesser player may have 'Rosol day', serve out of their skin, hit everything sweetly and be able to hit through the higher ranked player.

2) A greater range of attacking tennis from the top players. Even Djokovic is currently trying to improve his net and forecourt play. A few faster courts would see them play this way more.

But I think the players winning the big events and occupying the higher rankings would remain largely unchanged. Or, to put it another way, I struggle to think of a lower ranked player who would suddenly be a real contender on faster courts.

Consider the quicker of the courts on the tour, let's say Dubai and Cincy.

The last 6 Cincys have been won by Federer or Murray. Djokovic has been a finalist 4 times in those 6 years.

The last 5 Dubais have been won by Djokovic or Federer.

It's basically the same players as are doing well on the other, slower, courts.

So I think faster courts will bring us greater variety of play but I'm doubtful it will bring much more variety in results.

The variety of play is a good enough reason in itself to speed up a few courts. I don't think it will be the radical shift that many expect.

LuvSports! wrote:HM murdoch. Out of the players in the top 10 you mentioned who are attacking, sorry but I would take out djoko and nadal. For me they are not aggressive players at all.
To quote joey from friends (ish):
"You are so far behind the baseline, you can't even see the baseline, the baseline looks like a dot to you!"

Ha! I disagree completely on Djokovic. He plays very close to the baseline.

Nadal often plays very deeply but I still don't consider him a defensive player.

I think a common mistake is to consider being good at defending the same as being a defensive player.

Both Nadal and Djoko are excellent at defending. But they both try to strike early in the rally (Nadal perhaps less so) and their attacking weapons are amongst the best on tour. That to me makes them aggressive players.

When they play a truly defensive player i.e. Ferrer, it's a demolition job.

Good points HM.

In regards to speeding up courts it won't change the game overnight and I think that perspective has been forgotten. Do we really see Isner, Raonic or Berdych for example becoming S&Ver's overnight? Hell no!

Take Dubai, Queens, Cinncy as you say. Fast surfaces to which Murray, Djokovic, Nadal and Federer have had success in those events so it is by no means a gimmie a change at the top would occur.

Slow conditions at the moment play into the likes of Murray and Djokovic more so because they are solid enough to play longer rallies and favour points won by construction than just constant flat out winners every time.

Yes faster conditions might cause upsets like Rosol, but is that not the point? You want to be able to play a variety of players. For example at Wimbledon in the early rounds your Karlovic's, Isner's and Anderson's are a real test because they are more favoured in the TB situation. It wouldn't kill the sport to have such upsets. If anything it would be good to see Grass specialists back instead of just the HC and Clay specialists. Keeps the top guys pencils sharpened.

LK, can't argue with most of that.

I think the current tour magnifies a player's defensive skill. I think it's great that defensive skills have a chance to shine - I get as much pleasure from seeing Djokovic make an insane retrieval as I do from seeing Federer rip a forehand.

But, as we agree, we need more tournaments that magnify a player's offensive skills.

I genuinely would be happy with a Masters on an insanely quick wood surface. It would probably just be a bit of a serve fest but, for one tournament a year, I'd enjoy seeing that change of focus!

Chuck in some grass, some clay, a fast hardcourt, a really slow hardcourt, a few at different points in between.... ooh, lovely!

Two things I don't think we will see though:
1) Many serve & volley players. We'll see more of it as a tactic but I the days of players building their game around it are gone for good.

2) Many specialists. I think from a financial and even ambition perspective, it's just not worth players' while to limit their options in this way. A few weeks of injury or poor form would pretty much write of their year. Players will continue to have favoured surfaces but they'll be able to turn their hand to everything.

HM Murdoch wrote:Bring back wood!

(You have mentioned having a masters on wood as well). Thank you.

The fear that speeding up surfaces == Ace-fest is incorrect, IMVHO.

Just watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JA7alpR-So

(Thanks LK for reminding me of this ).

No probs LF

Always good to see a bit of Laver in his pomp. Towards the late 80's and 90's the S&V wasn't the mantra for every point on the Grass court. Sampras was more than willing to trade blows on the baseline if the point called for it.

Adding 15mph more doesn't add aces unless you have great placement...125 or 140 down the T will always get you aces. However, outright speed doesn't always link to the highest ace count...for example, Almagro leads aces this year but he isn't the fastest guy out there. He's great at variation and disguise.

However, the servers today just aren't as good at placement and variation as the 90s guys, they just tend to bang the serves down. Why? Well slower surfaces have another drawback in that they have resulted in less serving variation because outright speed is now needed to put any pressure on the returner...slice and spin just doesn't have the effect it used to have so guys just focus on having pretty 1D fast serves now. Even Federer has lost a lot of variation on his serve. So there is more to speeding up surface speed than simply increasing outright serving speed, it increases serving variety too. The 90s guys used much more spin and slice to allow them to gain the forecourt - fast serves aren't always great for aggressive follow ups. Faster courts would allow more serving variety and would allow good servers to become more viable at net.

We have to remember that surface speed isn't just about, er, speed. It's about the way the game adapts to, and is played in those conditions. On slower courts the ball sits up around shoulder height allowing guys like Djokovic to bang shots down with their Western grips. Faster courts make the ball bounce lower, shots are hit therefore with lower net clearance and it creates a whole different dynamic...rewarding players with great slices, SW-E grips and block returns. Western grip guys hate slice...Delpo and Djokovic being case in points.

So a variety of speeds literally changes the way the game is played, it rewards a different range of players and so creates variety of play and variety of future stars. Guys like Nadal, Djokovic and Murray would find it much harder to transition from high bouncing IW to low skidding fast DecoTurfII.

It's a no-brainer to me to start taking sand out of the paint cans for many HCs and change the grass mix at Wimb to create much needed variety everyone is crying out for...and allow younger players to make headway into the game as well. Guess how many under 20s are in the top 200? None.

You seem to contradict yourself within that post Lydian. Almagro leads the ace count because he has great placement and disguise, yet players have become lazy because slow court speeds mean that variation is no longer much use?

Other than the fact Almagro has a great serve, I disagree with the majority of your post. We saw at the Australian Open that the wide slice serve is still hugely effective in today's game. The likes of Murray used it very effectively, not necessarily at particularly high speed, to draw opponents well out of court. Even if not a clean winner, it allows control of the point. Similarly, someone like Raonic has a formidable kick serve, which he uses as a change up. On the high bouncing courts we have today, its near impossible to do anything with it. Whilst the average tour player has a much faster serve than their counterparts of a few years ago, spin and placement are as effective as ever. I'm particularly intrigued by the theory that Federer's serve is worse now than it used to be. I'd have thought most people agreed that his serve was better than ever during 2011/2012. Faster courts clearly wouldn't add to serving variety, as pure pace would again become even more effective.

Are you also suggesting that the players should go from a slow high bouncing IW to a low fast Miami? In my view, that would be a poor approach by the ATP. I'm all for variation in court speed but it should be seasonal. What you are suggesting is that the finalists in IW should then have to go to Miami and, with only a few days gap, be expected to play on completely opposite courts. That just makes matters a lottery. We want the best players making the latter stages, not just knocked out because they have not had time to adjust. Speed IW and Miami up slightly, make Toronto and the US Open significantly quicker and speed up Paris (plus relevant 250s/500s) and I would be much happier.

BS

Federer Service stats
Year DFs/Aces Service game played Service game/1DFs
2005 Aces 599 63 1093 7.1907895
DFs 152 0.253756
2006 Aces 656 63 1229 10.415254
DFs 118 0.179878
2007 Aces 597 62 971 11.290698
DFs 86 0.144054
2008 Aces 695 64 1033 13.415584
DFs 77 0.110791
2009 Aces 657 62 1009 7.5298507
DFs 134 0.203957
2010 Aces 658 62 980 8.9090909
DFs 110 0.167173
2011 Aces 504 64 904 9.2244898
DFs 98 0.194444
2012 Aces 665 63 1042 8.6833333
DFs 120 0.180451
2013 Aces 62 137 6.85
DFs 20 0.322581

You've lost me. What are you trying to show me? That he served slightly more DFs per game on average from 2009 onwards? What do you think the reason for that is?

sorry its hard to make it clear copying and pasting it
Link removed as per site rules on advertising other forums.

You said his serve was at his best in '11/12.

Well these stats say otherwise. He has served better in other years.

I think his back is contributing to his lwer stats this year.

Those stats don't actually say that he served better in other years - they simply show that he served more DFs (on average per game) than in other years. Note that the ace level appears to have remained remarkably consistent, as has the first serve %.

There could be all sorts of reasons for a slightly higher number of DFs, which would not necessarily mean that his serve had declined. For example, he might have decided to take the view that he would be more aggressive with his second serve - therefore also winning more points with it. It would be intriguing to see the average 2nd serve speed and also to know when the DFs occurred but I don't think that information is easily available.

Ok so I have stats showing that in other years his ace/df ratio was higher than the years of '11/12 that you eluded to.
It isn't every factor in serving but surely ace and double faults are a key part of it.

DO you have stats to back up your claims that his serve was better than ever in '11/'12? Because atm it is just your view.

I think Federers serve has gone off; once upon a time he seemed to go through a lot without dfs. I believe his serve was the decisive factor in the final of Wimbledon '07.

It's probably the back, imho. (by the way, it's not nice to get old: I had an absolute monster of a serve back in the day but I daren't let rip at more than 70% of that now, I think I'd be in traction!).

Sure, I completely accept its just my view. Obviously, I may be wrong. There is no stat I can use to prove that his serve has improved. However, what I can show is that it doesn't appear to have got worse:

% Service Games Won

2006 - 90%
2007 - 89%
2008 - 89%
2009 - 90%
2010 - 89%
2011 - 90%
2012 - 91%

First Serve Points Won

2006 - 77%
2007 - 77%
2008 - 77%
2009 - 79%
2010 - 78%
2011 - 79%
2012 - 78%

Second serve points won dipped slightly from 2009-2011 but intriguingly rose back to his best ever of 60% in 2012.

Given that I think it can be safely assumed that Federer of 2011-12 was not quite as good as he was in 2006 in some aspects of his game (his return stats do dip) I feel relatively confident that my view that his serve improved is correct.

I gratefully accept that rebuke!
Think i just got dunked on there.

legendkillarV2 wrote:No probs LF

legendkillarV2 wrote:Always good to see a bit of Laver in his pomp. Towards the late 80's and 90's the S&V wasn't the mantra for every point on the Grass court. Sampras was more than willing to trade blows on the baseline if the point called for it.

And he did with Agassi...

The BL game is much more aided by lighter racquets, luxilons (aka slingshots), and fitness.

Nadal and Dolgopolov would have wrist and joint issues playing with wood/gut.

Good stats BL.

My own view is that Roger has developed a better serve as his career has gone on, and this has compensated for the degradations in his general movement and the occasional back problems.

It's like + 3 for the serve itself, -2 for the general game and -1 for the dodgier back = parity.

when did you think his serving got worse bb

BS, sorry for the late reply, was out and about yesterday besides penning the Tilden article I'd wanted to post for a while.

Born Slippy wrote:You seem to contradict yourself within that post Lydian. Almagro leads the ace count because he has great placement and disguise, yet players have become lazy because slow court speeds mean that variation is no longer much use?

I don't see the contradiction. Almagro probably has the best serve on tour, IMO, but he also has an unusual one. Its got low ball toss and a very quick action making it hard to read. He uses a lot of variation in speed, style and placement - he can basically hit any serve he wants to (flat, kick, slice) to wherever he wants (wide, body, down the line), and he regularly changes it up. As a returner, you have NO idea what's coming at you. Or near you. Or away from you. Andy Murray's ex-coach Alex Corretja said Almagro has the best kick serve on tour and yet he's also the leading ace server. That's some variation. All this from a guy standing just 6 feet tall.
Aside from Almagro, yes players in general have become 'lazier' in their serves in terms of variation - and that also means speed variation - including Federer, and I'll explain why below.

Born Slippy wrote:We saw at the Australian Open that the wide slice serve is still hugely effective in today's game. The likes of Murray used it very effectively, not necessarily at particularly high speed, to draw opponents well out of court. Even if not a clean winner, it allows control of the point.

I don't doubt that, slice will always be useful and its a stock serve given it's the same technique as a flatter serve except you wrist pronate less. Its actually the easiest serve to do - its what juniors do loads of before they learn to pronate the follow through. What we see less of is kick, slice and flat serves by the SAME player in a match. Murray doesn't have a particularly good kick serve - as his dolly 2nd serve demonstrates. The point is that slice and kick are used less in general than before...due to slowing surfaces. Again, I'll explain this further.

Born Slippy wrote:Similarly, someone like Raonic has a formidable kick serve, which he uses as a change up. On the high bouncing courts we have today, its near impossible to do anything with it. Whilst the average tour player has a much faster serve than their counterparts of a few years ago, spin and placement are as effective as ever.

But Raonic has very little placement variation and he doesn't vary his speeds much either, it's quite predictable. Re: variance of speed, I'll make this point about Federer in a minute. Where is your proof that tour players are serving faster? I showed that the number of aces for Top 100 ace players - which is of course most of the top 100 or so - hasn't changed since the mid90s on clay, a surface where speed variance can be discounted. Outright speeds aren't going up, what is going up is greater use of faster/flatter serves at the expense of slower slices and kickers. This increases overall average speeds but thats different. This leads me to Federer.

Born Slippy wrote:I'm particularly intrigued by the theory that Federer's serve is worse now than it used to be. I'd have thought most people agreed that his serve was better than ever during 2011/2012. Faster courts clearly wouldn't add to serving variety, as pure pace would again become even more effective.

It's not better than ever. Far from it, looks are deceiving. One has to look at his serve speeds on average over the years, they have steadily crept up from mid 110s to low 120s (stats can be provided if needed, e.g. At RG11 he served at 121 average - this knackered his back for Wimb11 BTW in my opinion).
I believe his speed has been creeping up for a primary reason - again, because surfaces are slower. This means he's having to go for more fast serves - its not that he's putting more juice in, ie. faster serves, to get the same effect, it's just that he needs a greater number of fast serves to keep guys at bay given they have more time to return these days. Slices and kickers are not as effective in slower conditions as they used to be, he still uses them for variance but they're not a mainstay in general. Indeed, a kick serve puts the ball up into the shoulder area which Western grip guys like Djokovic, Del Potro and many others just love. So he needs to keeps serves lower by using flatter, hence fast serves. Slices are useful but the great movers get them back, e.g. Djokovic, if used too much - anyone remember match point at USO11? So, Federer's average speed increase is due to less speed variance being used across the year. The increase in number of faster serves has come at a price though - its simply knackered his back. This is why he's now taking longer in between tournaments in my opinion, that back needs more time to repair. But relying on fast serves is creating more back issues and inconsistency.

So another point regarding Federer needs to be brought up. The back issue is creating a lack of consistency which is killing him in close matches. He normally needs >60% 1st serves to get the best out of his game but he's becoming lumpy in 2012 and 2013 particularly. His first-serve percentage for 2013 so far is 63 percent, a little above his career mark of 62 percent (and 61 percent on hard courts). But the number has fluctuated wildly, and he has frequently struggled to find his mark at important moments. In the Australian Open semifinal against Andy Murray, for example, Federer's first-serve percentage for the match was 61 percent - but not in any given set. In the first set, it was 58 percent, then somehow 75 percent in the second, then 54 percent for the third, 58 percent in the fourth, down to 54 percent again in the fifth set. Did it determine the outcome of the match? Hardly, but it didn't help. It was a similar story during Federer's five-set win against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the previous round, where his first-serve percentage was again 61 percent, but went from a low of 55 percent in the first set to a high of 69 percent in the fourth. Some early signs of this deterioration had begun in the fourth round against Milos Raonic. It didn't show in the scoreline - Raonic is not known for his return and was hampered by a foot problem - but Federer didn't produce the same pinpoint deliveries during that match that he did during his third-round contest against Bernard Tomic, when he got in 69 percent of his first serves. The quality of his second serves also dropped subsequently, many landing shorter and with less angle. His service speeds didn't appear to suffer at all match to match (he needs to keep those fast serves going) but for a player who relies on placement and variety more than most, even a slight loss in accuracy is significant. Especially when combined with his notoriously low break point conversion rate against tough opponents.

Serving fluctuations are nothing new for Federer, particularly against other top players - last year, he went from getting 73 percent of first serves in during the quarterfinals of Cincinnati, to 54 percent in the semifinals, and was struggling to get out of the 50s throughout the French Open as well. And with so much game to back it up, he can frequently get away with it - he has still won 90 percent of his service games so far during the season. But it has been costly at key moments, like the weak second serve that allowed Murray to go on the offensive at break point at 1-1 in the first set and take the early lead in Melbourne. Federer's first-serve percentage against Julien Benneteau in Rotterdam was 54 percent, and serving to stay in the match, Federer missed four out of six first serves, including one that ended with a double fault. "If you lose your serve five times like I did today, you can't win indoors," he remarked. In Dubai, Federer had three match points in the second-set tiebreak against Tomas Berdych in the semifinals - the third on his own serve - but Berdych was able to hammer the return and escaped with a win. "I think I didn't serve great overall toward the end of the second set, and I think that showed in maybe that moment," said Federer afterward. After a period of cleaning up on faster surfaces a year ago, the inconsistency is costing him in similar conditions now. "The thing is, if you don't serve well on this court early on in the game, you don't serve well to get yourself out of trouble, things will go awful," he said of the quick Dubai courts. ''They'll look like you're flat, they'll look like you're not playing well, they'll look like there is no rhythm, which there isn't much. So if you go into a tough 0-30 hole, it's tough to get out of it, you know.". So for Federer, it's having to serve fast all the time that's killing his back, and this in turn is killing his consistency and accuracy.

But coming back to the main point. In general, the need for a higher number of fast serves across the board is reducing variance. Slower courts across the tour are reducing variety in all manner of different aspects - serve variance, baseline preponderance, power goes up, skill variance goes down, ralley length goes up, aggressive mindset goes down.

Born Slippy wrote:Are you also suggesting that the players should go from a slow high bouncing IW to a low fast Miami? In my view, that would be a poor approach by the ATP. I'm all for variation in court speed but it should be seasonal. What you are suggesting is that the finalists in IW should then have to go to Miami and, with only a few days gap, be expected to play on completely opposite courts. That just makes matters a lottery. We want the best players making the latter stages, not just knocked out because they have not had time to adjust. Speed IW and Miami up slightly, make Toronto and the US Open significantly quicker and speed up Paris (plus relevant 250s/500s) and I would be much happier.

No, I wasn't suggesting that specifically. But too many DecoTurfs are too slow now. There is a big speed difference between Montreal and Cincy on the same surface so your point already exists. Likewise AO and IW share Plexiplave, but AO is 4 rated, and IW 2. That's fine but IW has slowed too much. I'm all for seasonal patches of speeds....AO speed into further HCs, clay...grass...then N.American faster HC season before autumn indoors and WTF. We certainly agree on this point.

I don't know if anyone has been watching USA v Serbia in the Davis Cup, but it is being played on a fast hard court and some of the tennis has been fantastic.

I was watching it last night and it was terrific entertainment.

I don't believe it would alter the order of things at the top of the game too much because the best players are real all rounders, but it did firm up my opinion that tennis would be improved by having more fast tournaments.

LuvSports! wrote:when did you think his serving got worse bb

I was going to prepare an answer and then Lydian did it for me!

I think it's more about it being inconsistent, as the back has become a bigger factor. The first time it really seemed prominent was in late 2008, but he's had whole periods without trouble. They do seem to come at closer frequency now, though.

four pages and you guys havent veered off topic... Amazing. Keep it up

Danny_1982 wrote:I don't know if anyone has been watching USA v Serbia in the Davis Cup, but it is being played on a fast hard court and some of the tennis has been fantastic.

I was watching it last night and it was terrific entertainment.

I don't believe it would alter the order of things at the top of the game too much because the best players are real all rounders, but it did firm up my opinion that tennis would be improved by having more fast tournaments.

Funny thing is Danny, the official DC website rates the court as medium-slow! So even a touch of medium can make a difference!

My experience (& I might be wrong) - generally speaking, fans dont really know the difference between medium slow, and medium-fast, or between medium-fast & fast. I think 'slow' & 'fast' can be picked up by the average fan, but really, in my experience, fans dont know, or see the differrnce between a medium-fast court and a fast court.

Same thing happens in cricket. Dale Steyn runs in at 135 kms vs Tendulkar, who is comfortable facing that pace. He is a little flat. Comes back for a second-spell at the tail-enders bowls at 129, but gets them all out and it was fire & brimstone.

HM Murdoch wrote:

Danny_1982 wrote:I don't know if anyone has been watching USA v Serbia in the Davis Cup, but it is being played on a fast hard court and some of the tennis has been fantastic.

I was watching it last night and it was terrific entertainment.

I don't believe it would alter the order of things at the top of the game too much because the best players are real all rounders, but it did firm up my opinion that tennis would be improved by having more fast tournaments.

Funny thing is Danny, the official DC website rates the court as medium-slow! So even a touch of medium can make a difference!

Bizarre! Maybe they've just repainted it or something. It is definitely playing fast. It was making Querry's forehand look like the biggest weapon in tennis last night!!

Federer himself admits the slower conditions require less variety from his own game. He said this after his Raonic match at AO13:

“Obviously times have changed. Conditions have slowed down. That gives you an opportunity to be more consistent across all four majors as before we had the clay court specialists, the fast court players (clearly he sees himself as neither). Maybe I’m taking away things from myself a little bit but I truly believe things are a bit easier to play more consistent today.”

So slower conditions - its medium-slow just about everywhere - make it easier for top players to dominate, and they do so with a reduced skill set because they need less variety to dominate.

He might just have been detracting from his own achievements rather than saying his game has less variety.

Yes possibly Bit5, I acknowledge that too, but the inference is the same anyway...he's saying its easier to play consistently due to reduced need to play slow & fast specialists where you would clearly need to use different approaches and skills to win.

2002 Rankings
1 Hewitt, Lleyton
2 Agassi, Andre
3 Safin, Marat
4 Ferrero, Juan Carlos
5 Moya, Carlos
6 Federer, Roger
7 Novak, Jiri
8 Henman, Tim
9 Costa, Albert
10 Roddick, Andy

1994 rankings
1 Sampras, Pete
2 Agassi, Andre
3 Becker, Boris
4 Ivanisevic, Goran
5 Bruguera, Sergi
6 Stich, Michael
7 Chang, Michael
8 Berasategui, Alberto
9 Edberg, Stefan
10 Martin, Todd

So is the overall skill level of modern players that much less? Is

Tipsarevic is saying similar.

Questioner: How different are the surfaces? Because you guys play on grass, clay and indoors…

Janko Tipsarevic: Honestly? Not that much. You know, they created every surface, I don’t want to say the same, but really similar. The surfaces are so much alike that you don’t really have to go out of your way to change your game plan in order to adapt to a certain surface. Even if it’s indoor, outdoor, clay court or grass court.
http://www.perfect-tennis.co.uk/tipsarevic-agrees-with-federer-that-the-courts-are-too-similar/

If you're not having to use different game plans you're not having to bring in other aspects to win matches. It's like you have a bag of 25 tools - when surfaces varied more you needed to use all 25 in the course of a year, you adjusted your game plan in which say 15-20 you used for any given surface. Now you can get away with using the same 15-20 tools across all surfaces.

Kingraf those periods are not comparable - rankings from 2000 use best of 18 events, before it was best of 14. Best of 14 made it easier for specialists to get higher up if they could dominate one of the different surfaces. That made for a very different ranking dynamic...you had more variety of guys in the top 20. Besides, things hadn't changed comprehensively by end of 2002 anyway.

But you're mssing the point. If you look at 2004 onwards we have 3-4 guys winning all the slams and Masters. That didn't and couldn't happen before when you had very different winners across events.

The point is that a reduced overall game approach can help any one player dominate. That same reduced game plan could not have dominated in the 90s (or rather pre-2001).

Janko only has four career titles, maybe he should try mix it up?

Pete Sampras won all of three Clay titles, Lleyton Hewitt won his first clay title 3-4 years ago. Boris Becker never won a clay singles title. So to use your too analogy, if modern guys have 25 in the tool kit, but dont have to use them all, the big guys of yesteryear simply didnt have 25 tools to begin with

Good point. However, you then come up against the classic dilemma of wanting masters of reduced skills (specialists) vs. jacks of all trades (generalists). There is an argument that the more tools you have, the less able you are to use any of them.

It all depends on whether you appreciate buffet or a la carte tennis. What we need is a tour that reflects both tastes...it doesnt have to be mutually exclusive, ie. the argument we get from others that if we reverse the current trend we have to go back to 90s acefests. In finding a better balance we create a tour where winning all 4 slams and 9 Masters is the genuine challenge it used to be. Then we see who genuinely can use all 25 tools the best.

If all surfaces play the same. How does it change the way Nadal should be viewed? Maybe it's less significant that the majority of his slams were won on clay because clay plays similar to other surfaces. Or does the fact that he is so dominant on one surface compared with others prove that there is variety?

kingraf. Just noticed you are a mere babe at 18. Never would have guessed from your mature views, knowledge of past matches and your username. Thought it was a combination of the great Billie Jean King and Steffi Graff?

Oh, thats why people sometimes write it out as "kinggraf" I could never for the life of me decipher it. It was supposed to be "kingRafa", but my old keyboard was really stubborn, so I gave up on the "a". haha

Not a fan of Steffi (Hingis¡¡¡) and I dont have any tape of King to comment.

Not a fan of Steffi (Hingis & Seles¡¡¡) and I dont have any tape of King to comment.

kingraf. Get your history books out! No way can you be a sports journalist without knowing all about the great Billie Jean. And not just what she did on the tennis court.

I loved Seles too...

HE, all time greats like Nadal, Federer, Agassi, Sampras, Lendl, etc, are always going to do well across different surfaces. They have innate talent to adapt, some that little bit more of course. Nadal is not just a claycourter although he started that way. His groundstroke grips (same as Federer on FH) and movement enable him to adapt to and master most surfaces.

However, adaptation has been made easier by convergence via speed reduction. Borg couldn't win a hard slam, Lendl a grass one, Mac and Sampras clay ones. All former great players struggled across the divergent surfaces, yet we're to believe that history has thrown up 3 of its best players in the last 10 years given Federer and Nadal achieved the mystical career slam within 12 months of each other, with Djokovic coming close another 24 months later...and will probably achieve it soon enough.

Guys like Nadal, Federer and Djokovic have clearly prospered in medium to medium-slow conditions. They haven't had to adapt game plans like their forebears struggled with. It doesn't lessen their achievement, it just makes it non-comparable. Nadal winning on clay does show that surface is different, and its not speed...it's movement. Like fast grass, slow clay requires specialist movement. However, this is a "Speed" thread and my point is that we're homogenising - "de-varietising" - the game so much that its making the overall game less interesting and easier to dominate - Federer says so.

Once you have guys who can win all the events that eluded all the greats for 40 years then the uniqueness of those achievements is diminished. The sad point for Federer (and maybe Nadal) is that perhaps he could have still won all slams when surfaces were truly different - in some respects he was trained to do that - but now we'll never know because the game as changed radically within his own career.

No, I know who she is. And what she has done. I meant tape of her playing. All I have is a single Wimbledon final, and its only the last 4-5 games of the final set.

I think Nadal has a greater skill to adapt, though. Within his second year as a professional, he was ranked #200, at 16! Most guys arent even pro at that stage. The following year he was the youngest guy in the third round of Wimbledon. In 2004, he beats the world #1. 2005 he pushed Hewitt to five sets on the old Rebound-Ace. You chart that improvement, and it roasts any of his rivals. I still think he should have left Toni Circa 2009.

Back to the discussion, though. I said previously that comparing Eras in an attempt to prove which player is better is remarkably pointless

You don't need to extol Nadal's talent and virtues to me kingraf

He's been somewhat maligned as a talent from many quarters - but people who have followed him since 16, or actually play the game to a high level, or coach it, know this guy is not just a claycourter, its just where he started. He's a unique player - more unique than Federer in some respects due to his unorthodox game vs. Roger's textbook approach. But for that deformed bone in his foot who knows what fuller body of achievements he might have left behind. For example, if we discount Wimb12 as an outlier result given he left the tour for almost 8 mths afterwards, he's got to the every final Wimbledon since 2006 - missing 2009. We see his adaptation capability from the first time he beat Federer on faster HC as a 17 yr old. Of course some will just point to his fitness, in which case I point to the Rome 2006 final and ask how was Federer any different. Both are unique players.

Like I say, convergence may have been unkind to these players because it makes us think they couldn't have achieved similar in the 90s - yet Agassi did and his FH and BH grips were no different to Nadal's! Then again, what damage would Agassi have done had he emerged in mid2000s? All conjecture, but I'd just wish we can create conditions where the Borg/McEnroe, Sampras/Agassi, Nadal/Federer contrasts are created again or else it's going to become a fallow period in tennis history in my opinion.

The biggest thing with Agassi, is that he said that he felt he only four good hours. Could he stand up to the five-hour classics?

www.guardiannews.com/sport/blog/2013/jan/25/australian-open-diary-andre-agassi

Who knows. But Agassi pushing guys around for 4 hours would perhaps be tough on them too...he used to have guys on a rope. I note he went on to say "They're more calculated now. They play slower, so six hours is not the same six hours that I played. But they're also much better athletes. They also appear [in the lower body] to be a lot stronger than I was; upper body probably not as much. But my game was never about using my legs as much as it was bullying the ball around the court."

So perhaps on this era he would have been fitter, perhaps he'd be more aggressive so matches wouldn't last 5 hours, perhaps he'd win or lose...again, who knows.

He does make the point about playing slower too - Nadal/Djokovic played around 32s average for that 2012AO final, given they played 370 points if they switched to 25s (Agassi was much quicker than that) that would have saved 45 minutes alone.

The RG99 5 set final between Agassi vs Medvedev was 300 points and lasted 2hrs 51mins on clay - just shows how the game has slowed down.

(Nad/Djo 353 mins for 370 points = 57 secs per point
Aga/Med 211 mins for 297 points = 42 secs per point)