The Server’s Advantage In Tennis

Taranaki Daily News, 21 January 1935, Page 12

The Server’s Advantage In Tennis

TALK OF LEGISLATING FOR DEFENCE AGAINST “CANNON-BALL”

TUST as in the days before torpedoes and bombing aircraft the struggle existed between projectile and armourplating in naval warfare, each in turn improving itself until it had temporarily got the better of the other, so was (and continues to be) the fight between the server and .the receiver at lawn tennis (writes a special correspondent of a London paper). It is some years since a really new variety of service was invented for the discomfiture of the receiver; but when first introduced the varieties of the American service, as exemplified first by Beals Wright, and developed by M. E. McLoughlin, proved to be devastating in their effects, until the proper counter to them, discovered by J. C. Parke and Anthony Wilding, robbed them of much of their terror. The possession of a breaking service is, nowadays, by no means a guarantee of victory, but the inventiveness of the young American brain, assisted by the length of the young American body and arms, has developed the “cannon-ball” service, which, like the "smash,” quite frequently scores a point outright from its sheer pace. . . To deal with this form of service by standing right in to it and taking n almost on the half-volley—the method which proved effective in the case of the "breaking” service—is beyond the power of 99 men out of a hundred, consequently, the defence against it being, apparently, undiscoverdbie so far as the human element is concerned, an agitation is springing up th'deal with it by other methods. It has been laid down, with probable truth, that the area of the service court available tor the successful use of the “cannon-ball service is only the last eight inches of the court’s depth. That is, that every ace-winning service successful by pace alone pitches somewhere along the width of the service line within eight inches of ths line itself. It does require any vast ingenuity to suggest that if the service line were brought six inches nearer the net, the niargin of the “cannon-ball’s” efficacy wOuld be so considerably reduced as to render it practically harmless. This suggestion has, in face, recently been put forwaia.

To carry it into effect would undoubtedly deprive the “cannon-ball server of nearly all his present advantage, but would it improve the game? In the first place, it would necessitate an alteration of the rules governing the measurements of the court—rules which ever since the game began about JU years ago have proved both acceptable and adequate. . . ... Next, it Would be legislating y. Ith regard to the very few players whose service counts for anything vital at .the

expense Of all the rest of the millions who play the game all over the world. The ordinary player finds it hard enough'to keep his service within the limitations of the service court as it at present exists: take away nearly 1000 square inches of its surface from him, and he would either be reduced to a dismally soft service, or present his opponent with a luxuriant crop of “doubles.” Carrying this suggestion into effect, therefore, would ruin the game from the ordinary player’s point of view; and it is the ordinary player, not the champion or the would-be champion, who ought, to be considered. At present, the reliable defence against the “cannonball” service is only in process of being discovered: that it will be found, the history of the development of the game shows us. And it must always be remembered that the expenditure of energy necessary to produce the "can-non-ball” may very well tend to the defeat of its user in a long match, as has been evident at Wimbledon on several occasions, when the winner of, perhaps, seven or eight service aces in each of the first four sets of a match had taken so much out of himself that he was completely exhausted in the fifth. This problem, like others in the game, ought to be left to work itself out. In the meantime —no tinkering with the rules.