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For Gao Wen, Fai Lopez's tennis style is a brand new type encountered for the first time in his career, and everything needs to be readjusted and adapted.

Everyone says that this is the necessity of the times, but in fact, the phrase "wave of the times" is not enough to summarize the past and present of a sport.

Tennis, in fact, has always been lawn tennis at its origin stage; and serving to the net was once the mainstream or even the only way of playing lawn tennis.

However, in Wimbledon, the only grass-court event in the four Grand Slams, there are not many serve-and-volley players appearing on the court. Once upon a time, Wimbledon was considered a resort for serving and volleying, but now, Serving and volleying only exists as a sneak attack technique.

Time, technology, and business development have been quietly changing competitive sports, and tennis is no exception.

In 1996, when Stefan-Edberg (Stefan-Edberg) retired, Sampras once said that the last pure serve-and-volley player had withdrawn from the stage of history, and the so-called "serve-and-volley players" after him, all They have been adjusted with the progress of the times.

After that, Boris-Becker retired in 1999, Pete Sampras retired in 2003, and Tim Henman retired in 2007. The serve-and-volleyer is officially gone from the sport.

So what happened in just ten years?

The first to bear the brunt is the change in the type of court.

Rod Laver completed the "Grand Slam of the Year" in 1969, which is still a feat that no one can replicate. It's all grass, which cuts the difficulty factor of this feat to a certain extent.

The technology of serving and surfing the net itself is born because of the grass. When a tennis ball falls on the grass, it will produce unpredictable and uncontrollable irregular bounces. Therefore, the countermeasures players come up with are to avoid letting the tennis ball hit the ground as much as possible. Just complete the volley and throw the trouble back to the opponent.

Thus, the technology of serving and surfing the net appeared.

However, with the development of the times, tennis bid farewell to the aristocratic sports and has entered thousands of homes. Because the cultivation and arrangement of grass is very difficult, the convenience of hard courts is highlighted. It can be seen that plastic hard courts and cement hard courts play an important role in the comprehensive tennis sport. Played an unparalleled role in the popularization process.

As a direct result, the US Open evolved into a hard court in the 1970s and the Australian Open in the 1980s.

Naturally, the players adjusted their style of play and slowly retreated from the net to the bottom line.

From the adjustment of ATP and WTA events in the past two decades, it can be clearly seen that there are more and more hard-court events, and fewer and fewer grass-court events. As for the clay-court events, they have always remained stable.

Looking at the 2014 event calendar, professional events with more than 250 points, 64 events throughout the year, including 22 events on clay courts, 6 events on grass courts, and the other 36 events are all on hard courts—

The indoor rugs that once held their place have all but disappeared.

Among the six grass-court events, only Wimbledon is a major event. The other five events are all 200 points, and there is not even a 500-point event, let alone the Masters.

Although Wimbledon is still the oldest and most special existence among the four Grand Slams, the so-called grass court season is no longer in effect, which further reduces the living space of players who serve and net; The expansion has also affected the style of play of the new generation of players—

Not to mention that the "GOAT battle" between Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic was also directly affected. Just talking about the terrible front-net skills of the players born after 1990 can deeply feel the impact up.

In 1978, 1979, and 1980, Bjorn- Borg (Bjorn-) won the French Open championship by relying on the bottom line spin for three consecutive years, and then relied on two weeks of serving and net training to win back-to-back Wimbledon championships, writing a legend , has now become history that can never be replicated.

Although Nadal won the French Open and Wimbledon back-to-back in 2008, Federer in 2009, and Djokovic in 2021, from the perspective of game content and skills, the three players' styles of play are not essential. Change.

Among them, in the 2008 Wimbledon final, Nadal and Federer dedicated the "best game in history", which was an out-and-out bottom line duel.

It is hard to imagine that in the 2002 Wimbledon final, Hewitt and Nalbandian dedicated the bottom line tug-of-war for the first time on the final stage. A kind of destruction; in just six years, the bottom line tug of war has become a Wimbledon "classic".

Federer is a living example.

From the first Wimbledon summit in 2003 to the current seven-time champion, Federer's serve and net times have been decreasing year by year, and he has successfully mastered Wimbledon's dominance, becoming a new generation of "grass king"; however, Federer is already Among the Big Four, he serves the most frequently and has the best front-net skills.

Behind the tide of the times, what really reflects is the evolution of business development.

This was followed by changes in technology.

Like shark skin's disruptive changes in swimming, tennis has ushered in a comprehensive innovation in the materials of rackets and strings.

Faster, faster, heavier, and more accurate. Technological innovations can see a comprehensive improvement in hitting~lightnovelpub.net~This is destructive or even ruined for serving and hitting the net. Seriously, just look at the Nadal-Federer match—

Whenever Federer hits the net, Nadal is always able to find the line to break the net. Talent is part of the reason, technology is another part.

In 2000, "Tennis" magazine conducted a professional experiment to test the service speed of rackets made of different materials, and the result was a little surprising:

The difference in the absolute speed of serving the ball between rackets made of different materials is only about ten kilometers per hour.

In other words, the innovation of the racket and the ball string does not improve the serving link as much as expected. The legendary Navratilova expressed this point of view in an interview:

The update of racquet technology, the help of receiving and serving is far greater than the benefits of serving.

In the past, serve return was a passive technique in the traditional sense, but now it has become a strategic hub for offensive and defensive transitions. The rise of the two serve return masters, Djokovic and Murray, is the most representative.

Ten years ago, Agassi's serve return skills were unrivaled in the world, but now there are too many serve return experts who can reach such a high level:

Not to mention the Big Four, Hewitt, Nalbandian, Davydenko, Ferrer, etc. are all good players. An important link to seize the opportunity in the industry, this is the progress of the times.

Therefore, from the perspective of the improvement of serving and returning to re-examine the style of serving and surfing the net, we can see the development of the times:

The withdrawal of the entire style of play from the historical stage is definitely not done overnight. Looking back at the past at the current point in time, you can clearly see how a style of play completed its evolution and how it was eliminated.