Swinging Volleys:
The New Future of Attacking Tennis?

By John Yandell

The modern pro era is dominated by huge serves and heavy, high velocity groundstrokes. Although the statistics show that players can still win points when they go to the net, the serve and volley game seems effectively dead. By that I mean pure all the time serve and volley, coming in behind every first serve and even most second serves--plus coming in on second serve returns and short groundstrokes.

Is that death the consequence of the evolution of rackets, strings, and the athleticism of the players? Or is it somehow possible top players will find new ways to win a majority of their points at the net?

The reality is that they may already have found it. They just don't realize the full implications, and the commentators are too busy rehashing how great they were in the old days to realize it either.

What?

What am I talking about? The swinging volley. Yes we all know it exists. We see it in women's tennis. We see it in men's tennis. If you pay attention, you have also seen Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, and Roger Federer, among others, play serve and swinging volley tennis.

This means a first serve or even a second serve backed up with a swinging volley. Usually the swinging volley is a clean winner, but it can also set up a conventional volley to finish the point.

But in general the swinging volley is treated almost as an anomaly--something that somehow just happens in some situations. And I think maybe the top players think about it that way too, if they think about it.

The sequences don't seem planned. The players sense the return is a little high, or slow or floating. Or same for a ball hit in a rally.

Suddenly there is a ball in front of them and they know/feel they can swing. So they jump on it.

Regardless of actual intent, the reality is that a swinging volley is a huge shot with more pace and spin that any conventional volley ever hit in the history of tennis. Could this become the basis for a new, deliberate attacking style?

Yes it could. And I believe it will. Some player or players are going to figure it out and use swinging volleys more systematically and intentionally.

That's the way the advances usually occur in tennis. Players find ways to hit the ball better. Think of the wiper now universal on the modern forehand.

Or they find new ways to win points. Think of the shift to playing inside out forehand from the baseline.

And when change occurs, then the coaches will learn from the players--and start to train those new elements. And then the innovative becomes conventional wisdom.

I say this is what is going to happen with swinging volleys--and specifically serve and swinging volleys.

Research History

But why would a swinging volley be a more effective shot than a traditional volley? Three reasons. Pace, spin, and court position.

This claim isn't just observational. In the late 90s we did the first ever studies of ball speed in tennis--beyond the initial serve velocities recorded by the radar guns--quantifying the ball speeds on the shots of the great Pete Sampras. (Click Here.)

We found his average forehand mph was in the high 70s. We filmed one forehand that was 85mph. Today of course the forehands are hit with that speed and more--and with almost double the spin of Sampras's forehand. (Click Here for more on that.)

We were also able to measure the speeds on a handful of volleys. Not surprisingly, those speed were significantly lower than the groundstrokes, average in the mid to high 40mphs, with an occasionally volley moving over 50mph.

In a related study we also measured volley spin. Forehand volleys were spinning at less than 1000rpm, while backhand volleys were slightly more on average. (Click Here.)

And that data right there probably explains a big part of the decline of pure serve and volley tennis--and how the attacking game has changed. Conventional volleys are simply not consistently powerful enough to be hit for winners ball after ball given the changes in the speed and spin of the groundstrokes.

Besides speed and spin a related part of the explanation is court position. With serve speeds now in the mid 120s and higher, a serve and volley player has time only to land, take one step and split before hitting a first volley. If he is lucky that puts him about half way between the baseline and the service line--maybe not that close.

And from there he can hit a conventional first volley with only about half the speed and half the spin of a modern groundstroke. That seems like suicide. So instead players let the ball bounce and take a swing.

Swing is a key word here. In today's game, the swinging volley is essentially the same technical motion as a groundstroke. A swinging volley can also be hit from 10 feet inside the baseline or more. This is a position where groundstrokes are regularly hit for clean winners. And you just can't do that in most cases with conventional volleys.

More Data

It would be great to know from all that secret Hawkeye data that the ATP releases only sporadically, what the average speeds of a few dozen or hundred volleys and swinging volleys really are.

But chances are the swinging volleys reach the same speeds--70mph, 80mph, or faster as the groundstrokes. And maybe the swinging volleys actually have more velocity.

Why? Because the ball loses significant speed when bounces--roughly a third of the total velocity is lost due to the friction of the court surface at the bounce. But a ball hit in the air before it bounces hasn't lost that speed and likely some of that speed is reflected in the speed of the swinging volley itself.

Although we don't have anything like comprehensive data on spin either--again the ATP could really clarify things--what we do have shows that the spin levels on the swinging volleys are also comparable to the groundstrokes--or even higher. Take a look at the gorgeous Sam Stosur forehand swinging volley in this article.

That ball is spinning at over 3000rpm! The swinging forehand volley in the Roger Federer serve and volley sequence? Over 5000rpm! More than any groundstroke of Roger's we have ever measured.

Why so much spin? Again it's a hypothesis that needs more substantiation, but it would make sense that if the velocity of swinging volleys was as high or higher than the groundstrokes, then the spin levels would be as high or higher as well.

A New Class?

So is the swinging volley some new class of shot in terms of speed and spin in the pro game? Maybe! But even if not, it's still faster and heavier that a volley could ever be.

So how hard would it be for more players to incorporate more swinging volleys--or even go to so far as to make it a predominant style? Go in on the serve. Go in on the first short ball. Go in on weak second serves.

Not hard. In fact players already know the mechanics intimately.

A forehand swinging volley is hit with a full body turn. It's hit with great extension. It's hit with full wiper action. All the things that for elite players are already natural and automatic.

There isn't a new shot to learn here. It's simply the decision to apply that same swing to a ball in the air--which also typically has the same range of contact heights as the groundstrokes themselves.

Backhands?

But an obvious question, we have been talking so far about forehand swinging volleys. What about the backhand?

The answer is you see swinging two-handed backhand volleys all the time, especially on the women's side. It's the same adaptation.

But what about one handers? I don't believe there is any reason it wouldn't work. It's the same technical swing as the one-handed topspin groundstroke.

I haven't personally seen an elite one hander hit the shot yet--but probably I missed it so if you did let me know. But I did an experiment with some high level Norcal NTRP players.

Guess what? It was an easy adaptation.

And, using the pocket radar gun (Click Here for more on that), we found that the speed increased significantly compared to the classical backhand volley. Just like on the forehand swinging volley.

But maybe the strategic play here is not to hit many backhand swinging volleys and get around the ball when possible and hit inside out or inside in swinging forehand volleys. Like off the ground? It's a little explored option. But maybe not unexplored forever.

Personally I can imagine a young player who hasn't been told it's a low percentage to hit a swinging topspin volley at the level of his shoe laces--or one that is high over his shoulder. He just believes and swings--at those and all the heights in between.

And, possibly, the case of the swinging volley could even be the exception in which a coach might get ahead of the players in introducing an innovation that changes the game tactically.

Maybe that coach is even a Tennisplayer subscriber reading this article. Or maybe he is a young player doing the same.

I am not the first person, by the way, to consider this possibility. Remember the "spaghetti" strings? They made the spin increases from poly seem insignificant and they were banned in 1977 after Illie Nastase used them to snap Guillermo Vilas' 53-match clay-court winning streak. (Click Here.)

But not before the tortured genius who invented them, a German horticulturist named Werner Fischer, predicted that heavy topspin volleys were the future of serve and volley tennis. It's 40 years later, but maybe that prediction will still come true. And should it, just remember you read about it first here on Tennisplayer.