Serve and volley

Serve and volley is a style of play in tennis where the player serving moves quickly towards the net after hitting a serve. The server then attempts to hit a volley (a shot where the ball is struck without allowing it to bounce), as opposed to the baseline style, where the server stays back following the serve and attempts to hit a ground stroke (a shot where the ball is allowed to bounce before contact is made). The serve and volley style of play has diminished in recent years with advances in racquet and string technologies which allow players to generate a great amount of top spin on ground strokes and passing shots. The slowing of court surfaces and deflation of balls, promoting longer rallies for the enjoyment of spectators, has also put a damper on the serve and volley style. Some also claim that a lack of teaching of the serve and volley to juniors, who are too small to effectively employ this method, has caused it to become obsolete in grassroots tennis.

The aim of this strategy is to put immediate pressure on the opponent with the intent of ending points quickly. Good returns must be made, or else the server can gain the advantage. This tactic is especially useful on fast courts (e.g. grass courts) and less so on slow courts (e.g. clay courts). For it to be successful, the player must either have a good serve to expose an opponent's poor return or be exceptionally quick and confident in movement around the net to produce an effective returning volley. Ken Rosewall, for instance, had a very feeble serve but was a very successful serve-and-volley player for two decades. Goran Ivanišević, on the other hand, had success employing the serve-and-volley strategy with great serves and average volleys.

Serve-and-volley is thought to have been invented by the Australian Norman Brookes. Although earlier tennis greats such as Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines, and Don Budge had been noted for their fine serves and net games, they had not played a 100% serve-and-volley style game. Jack Kramer in the late 1940s was the first world-class player to consistently come to the net after every serve, including his second serve. Kramer writes, however, in his 1979 autobiography, that it was Bobby Riggs, his opponent in the 1948 Pro tennis tour who began the strategy: "When we first started touring he came at me on his first serve, on his second serve, and on my second serve.... my second serve didn't kick like Bobby's, so he could return that deep enough and follow into the net.... It forced me to think attack constantly. I would rush in and try to pound his weakest point -- his backhand. So the style I am famous for was not consciously planned: it was created out of the necessity of dealing with Bobby Riggs."

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