For Gao Wen, Fei Lopez's tennis style is a new type that he has encountered for the first time in his career, and everything needs to be readjusted.
Everyone says that this is the inevitable outcome of the times, but in fact, the phrase "wave of the times" is not enough to sum up the past and present of a sport.
Tennis, in fact, has always been lawn tennis in its origins; serving and netting were once the mainstream and even the only way to play lawn tennis.
However, in Wimbledon, the only grass-court tournament among the four Grand Slams, we can no longer see many serving and net-playing players on the court. Once upon a time, Wimbledon was considered a resort for serving and netting. However, now, Serving and hitting the net 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In 1996, when Stefan Edberg retired, Sampras once said that the last pure serve and net player had withdrawn from the stage of history. The so-called "server and net player" after him were all All have been adjusted with the progress of the times.
After that, Boris Becker retired in 1999, Pete Sampras retired in 2003, until Tim Henman retired in 2007, which also declared purity step by step. The serve-and-court player has officially disappeared from the sport.
So, what happened in these short ten years?
The first thing to bear the brunt is the change in stadium type.
Rod Laver completed the "Annual Grand Slam" in 1969. It is still a feat that no one can replicate. However, it should be noted that among the four Grand Slams that year, the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open all They are all grass, which reduces the difficulty of this feat to a certain extent.
The technology of serving and netting is itself born from grass. When a tennis ball falls on grass, it will produce irregular bounces that are unpredictable and uncontrollable. Therefore, the countermeasures that players have come up with is to avoid letting the tennis ball fall to the ground as much as possible. Before it hits the ground, Just complete the volley and throw the trouble back to the opponent.
As a result, the technology of serving and netting appeared.
However, with the development of the times, tennis bid farewell to the aristocratic sport and entered millions of households. Because the cultivation and arrangement of grassland is very difficult, the convenience of hard courts has become prominent. It can be seen that plastic hard courts and cement hard courts have played an important role in the overall sport of tennis. It plays an unparalleled role in the popularization process.
The direct result is that the US Open in the 1970s and the Australian Open in the 1980s both evolved into hard courts.
Naturally, the players' playing style also adjusted accordingly, and slowly retreated from the net to the baseline.
It can be clearly seen from the adjustment of ATP and WTA events in the past two decades that there are more and more hard-court events, while there are fewer and fewer grass-court events. As for clay-court events, they have always remained stable.
Looking at the 2014 event calendar, there are 64 professional events with more than 250 points in the year, including 22 on clay, six on grass, and the other 36 are all on hard courts——
Indoor rugs, which once had their place, have completely disappeared.
Among the six grass-court events, there is only one major event, Wimbledon. The other five events are all two-hundred-point events, and there is not even a five-hundred-point event, let alone the Masters.
Although Wimbledon still has the longest history and the most special status among the four Grand Slams, the so-called grass court season has become useless, which has further reduced the living space for serve and net players; at the same time, the rapid development of hard court events Expansion has also affected the playing style of the new generation of players——
Not to mention that the "GOAT battle" between Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic was also directly affected. Just talk about the terrible net skills of the players born after 1990, and you can deeply feel the impact. .
In 1978, 1979, and 1980, Bjorn-Borg won the French Open for three consecutive years by relying on baseline topspin, and then relied on two weeks of special training on serving and netting to win back-to-back Wimbledon championships. The legend has now become history that can never be replicated.
Although Nadal in 2008, Federer in 2009, and Djokovic in 2021 also achieved the feat of winning back-to-back titles at the French Open and Wimbledon, in terms of game content and skills, there is no essence in the playing styles of the three players. Change.
Among them, in the 2008 Wimbledon final, Nadal and Federer presented the "best match in history", which was a complete baseline showdown.
It is hard to imagine that in the 2002 Wimbledon final, Hewitt and Nalbandian engaged in a bottom-line tug-of-war for the first time on the final stage. At that time, it triggered a tsunami of negative comments and was considered to be a violation of the tradition of grass-court events. A kind of destruction; in just six years, the bottom line tug-of-war has become a "classic" at Wimbledon.
Federer is a living example.
From his first Wimbledon summit in 2003 to his current seven-time crown, Federer's serve and net attempts have decreased year by year, and he has successfully dominated Wimbledon and become the new generation of "King of Grass"; however, Federer is already Among the Big Four, he serves the ball the most frequently and has the best skills at the net.
Behind the wave of the times, what is truly reflected is the evolution of business development.
What follows closely behind are changes in technology.
Just as shark skin has revolutionized swimming, tennis has also ushered in a comprehensive revolution in the materials of rackets and strings.
Getting faster, turning more and more, getting heavier and more accurate. Innovations in technology can see an overall improvement in batting, which is destructive and even devastating for serving and netballing. Look at Na Just know the match between Dahl and Federer——
Whenever Federer goes online, Nadal can always find a way to break the net. Talent is part of the reason, and technology is another part.
In 2000, "Tennis" magazine conducted a professional experiment to test the serving speed of rackets made of different materials. The results were slightly surprising:
The absolute difference in serve speed between rackets made of different materials is only about ten kilometers per hour.
In other words, the innovation of rackets and strings has not improved the serving process as much as imagined. The legendary Navratilova expressed this view in an interview:
The update of racket technology will help the return of the serve far more than the benefit of the serve.
In the past, receiving the serve was a passive skill in the traditional sense, but now it has become a strategic hub for transitioning between offense and defense. The rise of the two receiving masters, Djokovic and Murray, is the most representative.
Ten years ago, Agassi's serve-returning skills were unique in the world, but now there are countless serve-receiving experts who can reach such a high level:
Not to mention the Big Four, Hewitt, Nalbandian, Davydenko, Ferrer, etc. are all good players. Their ability to receive the serve has been improved to a new level. This is an important step in seizing the opportunity. This is the progress of the times.
Therefore, if we look at the way of serving and netting again from the perspective of the improvement of receiving and receiving the serve, we can see the development trend of the times:
The withdrawal of an entire style of play from the stage of history definitely did not happen overnight. Looking back at the past at the current point in time, one can clearly see how a style of play evolved and was eliminated.
