1. Brad Hutchings on July 7, 2004 04:51 AM writes...

Questions for you Nick... Any idea how first shot accuracy has tracked average serve speed over the years? Also, how fast are the women serving now? Tennis seems to be the one sport where the women's version is at least as popular with fans as the men's version. Is women's tennis in danger of becoming a shooting gallery?

Seems like you could lessen the impact of first serves by making the match longer and reducing the break time and frequency. Even well-conditioned athletes get tired. Could that be done in a way that keeps tennis viable for TV?

2. Bill on July 7, 2004 10:37 AM writes...

Nick -- we've seen this before.....and will see it again in many other sports. Take for instance, the 'bodysuit' in swimming. The purists in the competitive swimming community were (and are) extremely outspoken against this technological development. They argue records broken by swimmers wearing this suit should not be sanctioned.

While I see their point they seem to forget technology has been creeping into the sport for quite some time. Case in point - Johnny Weissmuller set many world records wearing a wool suit and in pools lacking the wave-supression gizmos common today. For that matter, Mark Spitz swam at a time when wearing googles in competition was forbidden. We don't hear many people arguing on their behalf, do we?

So, it seems the issue has more to do with the pace and scope of technology advances in sport than it has to do with whether technological advances should be permitted or not.

3. Enobarbus on July 9, 2004 09:05 AM writes...

Good piece, Nick.

Bill, I think the swimming comparison is a stretch. Goggles and bodysuits may change the competitive balance in swimming, but they do not change the sport at a fundamental level.

Technology has changed, and is changing, tennis so much that it is in danger of becoming like archery -- each player watching his opponent put an ace in the box; most aces wins. An exaggeration, yes; but plenty of serves are unreturnable at 130 mph. And 150 mph is on its way.

Speed generated excitement in tennis up to a certain point. Then the men's points began to get too short. The spike in the popularity of women's tennis in the mid-90s correlates nicely.

4. Mark on July 9, 2004 06:09 PM writes...

This is radical but I'm all for no-holds barred competition in all areas. For example in F1 the race should be as much about the technology as the actual racing. A team 'steals' another one's innovation, too bad. Another team wants to have remote control rendering the driver redundant, so what? Keep it simple, there should be no rules barring technology. So the richest team loads up on tech and always wins, that's part of the game.

I believe the same thing with personal gear for the Olympic-type sports. I don't believe that the gear actually makes a true winner. You need a lot of talent whatever gear you use. The performance boosting treatments question is trickier because of health, but again it is extremely difficult to enforce. It should be a personal choice by the individual. What happens when it is always non-enhanced athletes (by choice) that are champions?

5. Bill on July 10, 2004 11:24 AM writes...

Enobarbus,

My point is the technology-in-sports issue has more to do with the scope and pace of technology than it has to do with whether technological advancements should be allowed at all. If I understand you correctly, the technology changes in swimming are 'okay' because they haven't radically changed the sport....however, technology adoption in tennis has gone too far. So, it seems we are in agreement...yes? no?

That said, we're on a slippery slope.....how much technology can be added to a sport before we've gone too far? How do we measure 'too far'?Who makes this call? There are many other related questions to answer.

Unfortunately, this trend will continue....a bit like getting smoke back in the bottle.

Where does this lead? My prediction - I see in the not-too-distant future two categories of sports emerging: the 1st category is the 'no-holds barred' version Mark advocates. In this case, everything goes: performance enhancing drugs, equipment, you name it. The 2nd category will be far more tightly-regulated and one in which change is rarely seen.

If this scenario comes to pass I'm willing to bet category 1 (no-holds-barred) will bring with it a much larger economic ecosystem than category 2. It will dominate the media and will capture most of the attention. Category 2 will become the domain for amateur participants and pureists.

6. Mark on July 10, 2004 01:13 PM writes...

It is going to be very easy to start and promote say an any-tech-goes tennis league or really any kind of league. The current 'official' leagues do not have a monopoly on who is allowed to go out and play the sport. Or even create media based on the sport. The internet and channel proliferation is creating an insatiable demand for content, and sports are by far the biggest category.

7. Perry on July 11, 2004 02:23 AM writes...

While mens tennis may now be all about first serves presumably because of the power provided by new racquet technology, we must consider that same new technology has made the womens game infinitely better to watch. Women now regularly hit with the power and accuracy that only men could accomplish as little as 15 years ago. Lower ranked men also now have the opportunity to challenge the top mens seeds on any given day, due at least in part to the equalizing power of new racquets.

Additionally, many of the top men do not even use the most advanced racquets - they use older versions that have more control and feel. This is similar to the music biz, where most great musicians prefer old school equipment because it provides them with that subtle but important increase in feel.

It is wholly possible to keep the same basic rules and dimensions of a game, while you let new technology and increased athleticism change the way it is played. Imagine what would happen if the NBA raised the baskets to 11 or 12 feet, just to prevent people from dunking instead of shooting jumpshots. The horror!

And just like basketball, tennis needs to avoid the suggestions of statists, and be allowed to grow, adapt and change with the times.

8. Enobarbus on July 12, 2004 07:44 AM writes...

Bill,

Good points, and I do not disagree. My distinction was aesthetic, mainly. Swimming is still an exciting and competetive sport. F1, not so much. Given an indefinite budget, there is much that one can do with a tennis racquet or a carbon-fiber chassis. The human body is less malleable -- at this point, anyway. Competition, then, is somehow in the human element of the event. After all, we might be less inclined to watch F1 if the cars were driven simply by computerized telemetry.

I like your "categories" idea, and I think the economic conclusions you draw are, sadly, right.

9. rob on July 19, 2004 11:06 PM writes...

NicK,

I think you're pretty off the mark with the fixation on the big server's in men's tennis. If you look @ the top players what you see now is that the serve return &(foot)speed kills . Witness the top 15 entry rankings (the old year-round rank)& see it populated by Coria, Hewitt, Nalbandian, Gaudio, Grosjean, Ferrero, Scheuttler, Agassi, Massu, & even Federer to some degree. None of that group are among the really big servers & most of these players reside @ less then 6 feet tall.

Only four of the top ten ace leaders on the ATP tour are in the top 20 (Roddick, Moya, Safin, Federer). While the top servers are getting up in the 130's (Andy Roddick excepted), this is not much of a change in velocity from a 10-15 years prior when Sampras, Ivanisevic, Stich, Forget, and Becker were hitting 130 mph regularly. What you do notice is the velocity of the ground strokes up signifigantly which is where (along with the serve return) the rackets have had the most dramatic effects. If you watched wimbledon this year you likely have never seen the amount of baseline rallies now in the last 20 years.

All things come full circle

10. Ali on July 20, 2004 05:04 PM writes...

Nick, I gotta disagree with your article and go with the last post. You are creating a straw man out of the big-servers. There are some truths about tennis that have not changed. One of them is that you need the whole package to be a winner. Federer rarely hits a serve over 120. He is a complete player, maybe even more complete than Agassi or Sampras. If you remember Federer's first Wimbledon Championship Run, he aced the living daylights out of everyone. Without serves in the 130's. In the process he took out Roddick and Phillipoussis. Baseliners without big serves have done quite well in recent slams, see Agassi, Kuerten, Moya, Kafelnikov, and all of the other Spaniards. So have serve and volleyers with small serves: Edberg and Rafter both used to top spin their serve into the box. In fact, aside from Ivanisevic, I haven't really seen a single big-server win a slam in some time. The year Krajicek won Wimbledon, he also hit a million backhand passing shots. Both of those guys also tore out their arms while serving like that. At the end of the day, maybe your problem is with Roddick's 150 mile per hour serves. Yet even with those serves he has only managed to win one slam. And has not even come close to winning the one slam - Wimbledon - which is catered directly to the serve game. You could say that he has lost because of Federer; but that makes the point which I want to make: there are many many ways to foil big servers, and those ways will always be available. In fact, if you watched this year's Wimby final, it was Roddick who was setting up three feet behind the baseline to return Federer's serves! Meanwhile Federer was crunching return winners. You see, the downfall of a huge serve is that it comes back even faster than you can react. Tennis players know that. There is a lot of strategy in tennis. In a game of angles and spin pure power will never singularly get the job done. Pete had a huge serve, but he also had the world's best second serve as far as placement goes - remember his ace, after vomiting, at the U.S. Open? He also had the sweetest running forehand and volleys of his era. Roddick has a big serve but he doesn't have the other shots and that's why he, like others such as Phillipoussis and Ivanisevic, hasn't gotten to the next level. Also, in your article you give no examples of the rackets that actual players are using these days. Ivanisevic, I think, uses the Yonex. Which is the lightest racket you can get. You cannot hit the ball hard with a racket that's too light, which you seem to think contributes to harder serving. Sampras used to add lead weights on his racket to make it head-heavy, which is what gave him the 'weight' to serve harder. That came with a price though; it always tired Sampras out. Its not Roddick's pretty standard racket that lets him serve so hard; its that gruesome knee & back bend that he uses. He's gonna pay the price with injuries. Let the players play.

11. rob on July 20, 2004 10:38 PM writes...

I agree with Ali. Roddick's back & shoulder motion make me cringe, its early degenerative arthritis waiting to happen & I can't imagine that he won't have signifigant injuries from it and his violent western forehand motion (like Tiger Woods' swing as well which has been pointed out for years).

One of the most interesting trends in tennis to me is the reemergence of the "little" man with good wheels that has overturned the convetional wisdom that the NBA sized player with 130+ mph serves were going to dominate the sport. What you've seen is the critical role agility & court coverage have assumed @ the expense of heigth/serving (only Henman, Moya, & Safin exceed 6' 1" of the top 15 players). There seems to have been some self-limiting process of natural selection against the increasing height seen in other sports, presumably for the lateral mobility & footwork limitations you get with increasing size.

12. GREGORY MITCHELL on August 31, 2004 03:15 PM writes...

JUST TO CHIME IN ON THE RACKET QUESTION, THE TOP FRAMES ON THE MEN TOUR ARE THE HEAD PROFESSIONAL THE PRINCE PRO, AND THE WILSON PRO STAFF. MOST OF THE OTHER FRAMES USED BY THE MALE PROS, NO MATTER THE BRAND, TEND TO STAY WITHIN THESE SIZE (110 TO 85 SQ IN ) AND WT. ( 10 TO 14 oz.) WITH MORE OF THE MEN GOING FOR A HEAVIER FRAME THAN IS SOLD TO THE PUBLIC.