Talk About Tennis 2.0

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 3:57 am

ponchi101 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 29, 2025 4:17 pm Quite on court, which makes him easy to like for me.
There is one simple, quick, 100% surefire way to make him an absolute fave, tomorrow. But I know he won't do it.

Before I get the tattoo: is it Jakob or Jakub?

ATP says "Jakub"

ashkor87 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 6:52 am not happy to see all these big serves dominating... not good for the game..

Haven't the courts been slowed down a lot since the mid-1990s to prevent the dominance of huge serves? So players just started serving bigger and now it's a problem again, is that what's happening? I heard Miami was playing fast. Maybe it's an anomoly.

I think in general we want some hard courts (maybe most) to play fast. We want fast surfaces. We want serves to be hard to break. Not impossible, but some people enjoyed Pete-Andre contrasts. The better returners will be rewarded.

Mensik was actually going to pull out of this tournament before it started with a knee injury, but when he went to do so, the official had gone to lunch, so he decided to tough it out.

I don't see any big serves dominating. They all have big serves, meaning that they can all crack 125 MPH. But look at the list of top ten, and you can't find a huge server that has real separation from the rest of the pack.
And Mensik yesterday hit a few serves at 132~135, but most his serves were around 125. He was hitting aces by placement, not sheer speed. I really liked that.

If even Djokovic can't get his racket on a serve, is that good for the game?

Maybe players are just too tall tese days..reduce the size of the serve box! Or raise the net! Take away the second serve .anything! Would anyone pay $5 to watch Perricard vs Mensik? The game will die at this rate

You are far too hard on Mensik. His serve was great against Djokovic, but he won that match because he was more consistent from the baseline in the tiebreaks, outlasting Djokovic while showing really good wheels to run down his shots with enough time to get them back deep.

Also, look at the rate of returns for the match. Sure, Mensik hit 13 aces, but other than that, both of them got over 50% of all serves, 1st and 2nd, back in.
And no, you cannot make the box smaller, of raise the net. Us amateurs also play the sport. And we heard this in the 80's when Becker came along, and even Philippe Chatrier said it was too much and we needed to get rid of the second serve.
And the S&V game disappeared. The big serve is needed because otherwise, every other game will be break of serve. We don't want that.

The second serve really is an anamoly..in which sport do you get two chances just to start play? I certainly think it is the easiest solution, without fiddling with infrastructure..

Tennis is JUST FINE the way it is. Tinkering with rules may cause very negative consequences. It will be no longer the sport we enjoy, but something else.

ashkor87 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 01, 2025 4:46 pm The second serve really is an anamoly..in which sport do you get two chances just to start play? I certainly think it is the easiest solution, without fiddling with infrastructure..

In baseball you get three strikes.
In football you get four downs.
In basketball you get two free throws, or three.
In skiing you get two runs down the slope.

In tennis, we get two serves. Heck, I need three, myself!

None of those are to start..do you get an extra ball as a pitcher? The 4 downs in football are like the 4 points to win a game.i know nothing about skiing.

I assume you know about baseball, since you lived in the USA. You get as many more balls as needed if you reached 3-2, and the next are fouls.
Anyway. One of the beautiful things in tennis is precisely that you get two serves. Getting that ball in that box is not easy. And seeing the very low success rates that players get on second serves, imagine the number of breaks.
I think it would be a bad idea.

The second serve is one of the six original rules of lawn tennis going back to Major Wingfield's rulebook in 1874!