The future of women's tennis

(Inspired by seeing world's #1 Serena Williams destroy world's #5 Sara Errani 6-0, 6-1 in the French Open semifinal just now, despite Errani having far superior ball striking technique and court position and running skills).

I used to like the women's game more than the men's because of its heterogeneity. Female tennis players are faster, more tactical, and less muscular, and have always trained to emphasize these (stereotypically feminine, for better or worse) traits. As a result, what the women's game lacked in brawn and decisiveness it made up for in class and intelligence. For these reasons, women's tennis has been much more open to upsets, without the usual 3-4 players to dominate the scene, which is always great for the sport.

At least Serena doesn't orgasm loudly whenever she hits the ball...

But I fear that the era of quality women's tennis is coming to a close as the hard hitters (Williams, Azarenka, and Sharapova, pictured left) consolidate their lead and leave the pack behind. Vika is the more classically trained of the three, but she too is a baseline dweller who relies almost exclusively on pace-setting and out-hitting. These three win matches by tiring their opponents and causing unforced errors. They beat the balls so hard that they have to be changed every 5-6 games, as opposed to every set or so as it used to be. In this regard, the last player of the past generation was Kim Clijsters, a superb court mover and defender who relied on a killer mix of athleticism and shot selection.

In a sense, a similar shift had taken place in the men's game in the early 1990s, as the big hitters from the American school (Agassi, Courier) eventually came to dominate the more refined Europeans (Becker, Edberg, Lendl). The notable exception was Pete Sampras, that sly master of serve and volley, who was in many ways both a ghost of tennis past and a precursor of how the game would evolve; more on that below.

Roger Federer is, in many regards, the perfect tennis player.

Thankfully, men's tennis no longer relies exclusively on hard hitting. While still primarily centered on conservative baseline play, it also relies heavily on precision and mental endurance. The best two players of the last decade, Nadal and Federer, are mostly known for their all-around play; especially Federer, who in many regards is the perfect tennis player and the most reliable there ever was. To ascend to their level, new stars like Murray and Djokovic have had to do the same, abandoning the baseline play style that characterized their youth; Nole in particular used to be infuriating to watch, because it was just obvious that he had a deep well of technical talent that he was just not drawing from. So the hard-hitting stage in the men's game lasted all of 10-15 years before it was tempered by the return of class.

If all that is true, then perhaps there is hope that the same will happen to the women's game. At the start of the 1990s, many purists decried the American school for "killing the beautiful game," but history has quickly proved them wrong. Maybe the women's game will take the same path come the next generation, when it will no longer be enough to slam your body into the ball as Serena does without also possessing a significant amount of precision, finesse, and mental toughness.

One can only hope, because right now women's tennis is boring to watch. It doesn't matter how many beautiful dropshots Errani and Schiavone place, or how tough Kirilenko and Kuznetsova are, or how expertly Li sets the rally pace to her advantage. These things only count in matches among other players, which are still fun for the most part, but in the end you already know that they're all going to be crushed by the humdrum racket violence of the terrible trio, and that's just not entertaining anymore.

Of course, tennis is just walking the same path as many other professional sports: moving away from specialization and division of labor. Take football, for example. You can no longer afford to be "just" a clean hitter, or "just" a great defender, or "just" very fast: in football you must run fast, hit hard, play fine, and be able to reason, or you will never amount to much. This was the Dutch total football experiment in the 1970s, and it was so successful that everyone ended up going that way. Likewise, in many individual sports you now have to be able to incorporate all sorts of skills, because someone else will have them, and that someone is going to beat you in the end.

The reasons for these shifts in the last 2-3 generations is obviously to be found in a much more thorough and scientific understanding of the relation between nutrition and training in sports, which allowed us to figure out that one needn't choose and that all-around specialization was possible -- but that's another ballpark (and since the aquatics and athletics worlds are this summer, I will probably be unable to refrain from getting on my soapbox about all that pretty soon!).