Why is it that Wimbledon has slowed down since the 90s? Differing surface and heavier balls means that the baseliners now have much more of a chance than they once did.

Is it because famously a few baseliners would refuse to play Wimbledon altogether because they knew the surface wasn't suited to their game. Therefore someone, somewhere, made a conscious decision to try and slow the grass courts down to make more of these baseliners want to come and play there? "Grass is for cows" I think one (can't remember who) said.

I guess I'm biased because I like grass court tennis and I like serve and volleying but I think it's a shame that serve and volleyers who should do well on grass courts are not being given a chance to play the way they want to. I for one would not like the game to be taken over by everyone playing from the baseline. The ideal I think is to have a good mixture of all different styles.

Clay courts favour baseline players and they have a specialist surface, so why can't serve and volleyers have grass as their specialist surface? Grass should not play like a hard court. Also the grass court season isn't as long as the clay court season.

Serve and volley and grass court tennis seems to be an endangered species, and its a great shame in my opinion.

"grass is for cows", said by Marat Safin..

Courts haven't slowed up that much. Also look at the records of the clay courters in the last 7-8 years. Not that many in the final :rolleyes:

Reason for the courts slowing up? Simply that they are looked after better. Different type of grass used (I think), doesn't wear as much. Chalk replaced by titananium, also wears better.

I think that they have the balance just about right. Yes, baseliners can do a little better, but it's still the fastest surface, after all. Mahut's result against Rafa at Queen's shows that serve and volley can still work. It's just that the margin for error is smaller now due to higher quality returns (racquet technology etc etc)

"Grass is for cows" was I beleive originally said by Ivan Lendl cos he was frustrated with his inability to win Wimby! :D

I agree with Yorkshire, and also Petalp to a degree. Maybe they haven't slowed down as much as we think but there has certainly been enough change to the courts to let more of the clay courters and non-grass courters in. Some says it adds vareity. I see their point but we already have specialist surfaces for those who prefer the baseline. And we see enough fo them throughout the year already. The poor grass courters only have a few weeks as their season, and making it less easy for them to lay thier prefered game style is really unfair. And in the long run we will be lucky to see the art of volley and touch because the incentive to make these skills a key part of your game and execute them well is just getting less and less. Soem might nto care but I find that extremely sad. :(

Ah yes, Ivan did say it, didn't he!! So no marks for originality, Marat :)

Isn't the racquet technology more the issue than the courts, even if they have slowed down a little? I mean, in the 80s/ 90s, players used to serve and volley at the USO and the AO, and the current SW19 courts are still faster than the surfaces at either of those tournaments have ever been (in terms of reverse ace and hardcourt, that is)..

I think it's a combo of both tbh. I guess the raquet technologiy makes it so much easier to hit bigger from the baseline and that wil have an efffect too. You don't need to hit so big when you rush the net. Having said that requet technolgy has helped serve voleyers too, I mean look how huge serves are nowadays compared to in the past. And I don't put it all down to bigger, stronger players. It makes it much easier to make a volley too with the larger raquet heads. But I guess overall it favours big hitting baseliners.

Having read your post now I am nto sure what the answer is! roflmao
You are right though that people used to serve and volley onn other surfaces. Likewise we had baseliners at Wimby - Connors and Evert being wo particular players of note in that dept. What I really miss is the classic confrontations fo the baseliner v the serve volleyer - like Navratilova v Evert and Mac v Connors. If we lose more serve volleyers, then those great contrasting styles matches will be few and far between.

Wimbledon was played under pretty hot conditions the last few years. and dried out grass is a remarkable slower (+ higher bounce of course) compared with what we're witnessing at Queens this week; that's fast!
This week Roddick's 1st serve avg. speed is 10 miles faster than is usually is at wimbledon :blink:

Interesting about the speed of Roddick's serve. I would not be surprised if Wimbledon and queens had decided to speed up their courts (or balls) to revive S&V. There have been a few tennis fan complaining that the SV was a dying art....

Also said by Marcelo Rios....

you just want to slap every player that doesn't follow up a shortball or a deep slice with an approach to net. cut off the pace and cut off the angle. you won the point, the crowd is happy and we all get to see pretty tennis :P

a call to all playing wimbledon 07, say hello to net, it won't bite :)

Continuing with the cow theme, Medvedev used to call it the Milky Way Open ...

Very interesting about the serve being faster. Normally the serve is measure in the first few feet after the ball is hit, not after the bounce, so I wonder if Roddick is hitting it huge at the moment or whether there are different balls being used at Queens. :shrug: