Also Bublik, Berrettini, and maybe even Murray. Murray won ten straight matches on grass this season (in two challengers, but still).
I think it’s really a two-fold effect of slightly slower surfaces combined with poly strings. If they’d just ban poly then I’m not sure the surface changes would be a big deal. There’s a reason ITF banned spaghetti strings and the poly produces almost the same effect.
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Interesting that the AO rally length is the same as the US Open and French Open lately. I thought that the AO was a significantly faster surface than the US Open.
They’ve changed it so many times that it’s hard to say, but historically I always thought of US Open as being faster. The US Open is certainly notorious for the lively red logo ball they use. Of course, speed is only one component with the amount of kick also being critical.
Yeah, there was a certain romance to the era when the surfaces played very differently and there were more specialized players. Guys like Sergei Bruguera added a really interesting dynamic to the sport.
I wonder if stars played more doubles back then to keep their volleying game sharp?
Murray handling Peniston easily
#268 or w/e - bloody well should!
Not so long ago Murray was ranked around there
Yeah but I guess that was while he was still recovering from his 6 million dollar man implant surgery.
Anyway he’s too old and out of condition now but I’d love to see him knocking Novax out (don’t even know if they’re in the same half of the draw).
Alcaraz > NoVaccine
He’s the exact same age as Novax!
I’m rooting for Murray because it’s a good story but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m rooting for Novax every time I watch him just because it’s more fun to accept the inevitable. And the more I watch him the more I like him, might not agree with all his views but he’s certainly genuine and that is endearing in a way. I went from only rooting for Novax when he was playing the hated Ralph Nadal but here we are.
Yeah but he doesn’t have the same quality of drugs as Novax, plus being out of the top level game for so long has taken its toll.
Doesn’t he? Surely he could get Federer’s old doping team. Dude is worth over a hundred million dollars, if he wants the good drugs he can get them.
Fed’s drugs and tech are passe now I guess. The highly competitive and lucrative field of sports doping moves fast.
On serve and volley thing, have you ever played tennis games against the tougher serve and volley computers? It sucked, they’d serve out wide and rush the net, they were impossible to pass and you had to lob them, but depending on how good they were supposed to be you had like a 1 in 10 chance of an effective lob. Really not fun gameplay even on your couch.
I’m ambivalent about the demise of serve and volley overall, it wasn’t that fun to watch back in the day, even if the alternative now is a bit monotonous also. I feel like going to the net during a rally to end points should be more part of the game than it is today, but I prefer the baseline grind to the pinnacle of serve & volley.
It’s like the balance in cricket between wickets that favour the batters and those that favour bowlers - ideally in tennis surely you want more of a balance between baseline play and net play, even after allowing for clay being at one end of the spectrum and grass at the other.
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Yeah, balance is good, I remember Michael Stich a bit, he was a big serve and volley guy, here are the highlights of a match with Sampras of 93. There are some nice points there.
Federer started his career as a serve and volley guy, right? And started doing it more later in his career.