THE KEY TO WIMBLEDON? NEWSFLASH: IT'S NOT THE SERVE

Is there a key success factor on grass, and if so, what is it?  I say everyone's serve is better on grass, so that's not the key success factor - that's a myth.

It's the return.

Recently Rafael Nadal opined that "If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best."  The missing context is that he was clearly explaining how he had won his first tournament on grass without much preparation and without much of a good run of form to speak of leading into the tournament.  But not surprisingly it kicked off an extended debate in the blogosphere about the validity of results on grass, because of the influence of the serve.

I think what Nadal implied (without really meaning to) is that you can lose a match - any match - on grass to a player who serves exceptionally well on the day, and he's right.  That's one of the reasons why Wimbledon is so hard to win:  because you can so easily lose any single match if you have a bad day and your opponent (no matter who he is) serves his socks off.  But unlike what was immediately interpreted as a dig at grass court tennis (something that Nadal, who has always professed his love of Wimbledon and grass court tennis, would never do), you really can't win Wimbledon with just a big serve.

That is just a myth.

The universe of players who have won Wimbledon is much smaller than other majors, and it does not necessarily reflect players with the biggest serve. Serving well (and not necessarily big) like Federer and Sampras helps a great deal, but you have to serve well, not just big.  In fact, I think the reason why Federer and Sampras have won so many Wimbledons, and why the universe of champions at Wimbledon is smaller than the other majors, is precisely because the serve is not the deciding factor in whether you can win it.  Take the following statistics:

# of different FO champions in the open era = 26
# of different Wimbledon champions in the open era = 20

# of different FO champions in the last 20 years = 12
# of different Wimbledon champions in the last 20 years = 8

I don't mean to denigrate Roland Garros, but just as the universe of players who have won 250's is greater than those who have won 500's which is greater than those who have won 1000's which is greater than those who have won majors, the derived conclusion is that the harder it is to win the tournament, the smaller the universe of players who actually do it.  So, by this logic, that the universe of players who have won the FO is greater than the universe of players who have won Wimbledon would suggest that Wimbledon is harder to win.  If you doubt this conclusion, you must accept the opposite:  that the 250's are the hardest to win, and that just doesn't fly.

The reason the 500s are harder than 250s is that the field is typically stronger, because there are more points at stake, and they are more coveted. That is precisely the point of the comparison, and transitively the comparison carries through to each level of more and more coveted titles, including comparing the majors.  Again, no denigration of the the tournaments that lose out in the comparison, but merely a logical conclusion from the evidence of the universe of players who've won the title.

Now, because Federer and Sampras have such great serves, the assumption is that the better your serve, the more likely you are to win Wimbledon.  As such, when sizing up a player's chances, or predicting the result of a particular match, the serves are frequently compared to determine who has the advantage.  But I am of the opinion that comparing serves is actually off the mark.  You are mixing and matching two things - one doesn't compare serves - that is irrelevant because only one player at a time serves. One compares the serve of one to the return of the other. A player with a big serve can escape losses to other players with big serves if they return well.  It is rare that players with really big serves return well, and also why players with just big serves (and little else to their game) rarely win Wimbledon.

Goran Ivanisevic is a perfect example - that man had the biggest and best serve in the history of tennis, but he won Wimbledon exactly once almost by accident.  In his best chance (on paper anyway), in 1992 he lost to Andre Agassi, a player with a relatively weak serve but a relatively oustanding return (who happened to beat Boris Becker and John McEnroe along the way - not exactly slouches in the serve department).  Ivanisevic's other Wimbledon final losses were to another player with a great serve - Pete Sampras.  So what distinguished the two?

The return - Sampras' was a better (as well as the rest of his game - but I digress).

So a big serve gets you a chance to win a match or two here or there - but if you want to win Wimbledon, you need more than a big serve. You need the whole package including a good serve.  But only the best of the best have the whole package, and as such, relatively few players have won Wimbledon as compared to say, the French Open, where a lot of players that did not have the full package, have won relatively more titles than have done so at a Wimbledon.

The logic and the stats on the universe of players who have won Wimbledon versus Roland Garros is very underrated, but it is not a matter of opinion.  As for the effect of the serve on grass, it is inversely overrated - Nadal has 2 Wimbledons, Djokovic 2, Murray 1, even Federer at 7 titles...not one of them could be said to have one of the biggest serves on tour, earning a lot of "cheap" points. Roddick had a huge serve, but consistently lost to players who returned better than him (after all, so few serve better than him they must have had better returns). Ivanisevic had the biggest serve ever and he won once, each time he lost to a player, not with a better serve, but a better return.

To win at Wimbledon you need a good serve among many things, but it is not the deciding factor - the return is.  Of course, even a good return (alone) isn't enough - you need the full package. You have to be able to attack and defend, you need decent volleys, but most importantly you need a good serve, because everybody gets a little help on the serve on grass. That the serve is the deciding factor to winning Wimbledon is a myth of grass court tennis that has persisted for years since the late 40's when serve and volley tennis became a full time tactical approach. There have been a lot of players with great serves who have not won Wimbledon, but almost none with bad returns, and certainly no multiple champions with a poor return of serve.

An example of this is Ivan Lendl - his biggest problem on grass wasn't his serve (which was excellent) it was his return, which he was never able to master on grass, despite years of trying. Lendl just wasn't that talented, and as a result he needed time and a certain bounce to return well, which he would get on clay or hard courts, and won many majors on those surfaces - what foiled him on grass was the return.  Lendl's talent limited his return against the best players with the best serves - this is not an on/off proposition as in "either you're talented enough or not" - it does depend on the guy across the net. He had as good a serve as the players he lost to, with perhaps the exception of Becker, but he lost to a lot more players than Becker, his problem against those players he lost to was that he couldn't make any headway in his returns.  His own serve was excellent.  Just because your return isn't good enough against Edberg, Becker and Pat Cash, doesn't mean it won't be good enough against Jeff Tarango or Brad Gilbert.

Go down the list of players with the biggest serves on tour over the last 40 years and remove those players with good returns (Colin Dibley, Ivan Ljubicic, Steven Denton, Mark Phillipousis, Kevin Curren, Bobo Zivojinovic, Greg Rusedski, Ivo Karlovic, Roscoe Tanner, Andy Roddick) and you'll have a very long list of players with big serves who have never won Wimbledon.  Now, do the reverse - list the players with the best returns in the game, remove those with great serves and you'll still have a list of players who have won Wimbledon (Agassi, Borg, Connors, Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, etc.).  That's just good analysis that dispels the myth that the deciding factor in winning Wimbledon is the serve.  Remember that on grass everybody's serve is a little more effective because of the surface, therefore getting an edge over the field would necessarily come from being able to neutralize that phenomenon, not from benefitting from it, which everyone does and which does not give you an edge.

Whether the return is harder to master or acquire is not relevant - it is whether having an outstanding return or an outstanding serve is the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon.  Nadal, Murray, Djokovic, even Federer to some extent, rarely lead the ATP in aces, 1st percentage won or even service games won - and if they do, it isn't because they get a lot of free points on the serves like the Karlovic's, Isners, Lopez's, Tsonga's, Almagro's and Raonics of the world. They may use their serve better than this lot, but that's because they're better tennis players that are able to do more with less (on the serve). What they all do better than that lot is return of serve, and they've all won Wimbledon in the last 10 years - 3 of them more than once.

Counter-intuitive, I know, but true.

In fact, I'll go you one better - I don't even think it's even critical to have a great serve, to win Wimbledon, because there a lot of players who had just good serves and still won - therefore the serve cannot be the deciding factor in whether you will win Wimbledon.  What Nadal referred to with the big serves is really a reference to the risk a great player runs of being dumped out of the tournament by a guy serving his socks off for one day, but without much of an overall game. That kind of player can be a spoiler, and there are a lot of spoilers at Wimbledon, and from that I conclude (along with the universe of players argument) that that's one big reason why Wimbledon is harder to win than the other majors.  Particularly on grass, where everyone's serve is helped by the surface, there is a greater risk that a spoiler that can serve you off the court in one match.

That doesn't happen as often on other surfaces because the serve doesn't have as big effect - and that is the reason why at Wimbledon a great return is more important than a great serve.  Because if you can't efficiently take advantage of the few opportunities you get to break serve (attack second serves, attack poorly placed first serves, or just get your racquet on the ball a lot), you will eventually run into someone who serves you off the court. The truly great players (among other things) have great returns, so they survive the serving mine field that is grass court tennis better than the other (numerous) players with great serves, but a minimal/weak return game - hence the cream really rises to the top at Wimbledon.

Sampras rarely served above 125mph, even at his best - there were always players on tour with bigger serves, but none with better serves - he used his to great effect. And it helps to use a great serve to great effect if you have the game to back it up, which Rusedski, Roddick, Ljubicic, Phillipousis, Ivanisevic and oh so many other big serving contemporaries did not have - and a big part of that overall game to back up whatever serve you may possess (good to great) is the return of serve.  Federer also rarely serves big (130+), but his placement is outstanding, and nobody uses the serve to set up their game better than Federer - of course it helps that his game is outstanding, but the point is that it's not all down to the serve.

Riddle me this - why is it that Federer was so frequently able to out ace Roddick at Wimbledon when they played?  Because his return was better, not because his serve was.  And if I'm not mistaken, McEnroe never hit a serve over 120mph in his career, not so of the Roscoe Tanners and Kevin Curren's of his era - their serves were huge even by modern standards. But his overall game (including the return) was superior to both of those players, and as such he had more success at Wimbledon.

In fact, two of the biggest modern servers gave us an example in 2010 that put this distinction in relief:  that absurd farce of a match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut where the 5th set had 138 games in it, where it took Isner 69 games to break Mahut's serves.

Does anyone think that any of the players who've won Wimbledon in the last 10 years would take 69 games to break anyone's serve, let alone Nicolas Mahut's? Neither Isner nor Mahut have much of a return game to speak of, and not coincidentally neither has ever done anything significant at Wimbledon other than that match. They may win matches and/or smaller tournaments with depleted fields, but when the best of the best are all there, they just can't serve their way to glory - eventually their inability to return well catches up to them. That's not the case with the best players in the world. That's why only the best players in history win Wimbledon. And that's why Wimbledon is the hardest tournament to win.

And what of poor old Andy Roddick - the argument is that had it not been for Federer, he would have won 4 Wimbledons, right?  I'm not so sure about that - after all, he lost to a lot more players at Wimbledon than just Roger Federer, and that Federer is a better player is a general statement which provides no insight - the better player doesn't always win (if that were the case, the trophy could be handed out at the draw).  On grass, Federer bested Roddick as frequently as he did because he neutralized his serve with a great return of serve, which Roddick could never do.  That was the deciding factor between them, not either of their serves which were both outstanding.


That's not to say that Federer's serve isn't really good - just not the equal of Roddick's - better game, obviously (especially the return) - but not the serve.  But let's set that debatable example aside...can the serve possibly explain his losses to Murray (2006), Gasquet (2007), Randy Lu (2010), Tipsarevic (2008), Lopez (2011), Ferrer (2012)?  Maybe Ivanisevic (2001), but that entire tournament was the outlier - he also lost to Rusedski in 2002, but in both matches to equally dominant serving players, the telling factor was the return - Rusedski broke Roddick 3 times 2002 and Ivanisevic twice in 2001...but he never broke either of them. And equally telling of Rusedski - he lost in the very next round....to Xavier Malisse. Now I can tell you that there were about 25 things Malisse did better than Rusedski, but the serve wasn't one of them - and if there were every a place where Rusedski should have put his serve to use against Malisse (if it were key) it would have been at Wimbledon.  But surprise, surprise, Malisse broke Rusedski 3 times to 2.

To be honest, I watched Roddick play tennis for 10 years, and I can't ever remember him serving poorly - he may have, but it would have been exceedingly rare.  It was the one part of his game that never broke down.  But I have seen a lot of guys get a beat on his serve in one game and the rest of his game fell apart.  He himself rarely broke serve on grass, precisely because it is so hard to do.

I should also point out something that is a logical extension of the "it's the return, stupid" argument:  the better players have better returns of serve precisely because it requires more talent to consistently respond well to the easiest shot in the game to produce - i.e. the serve. For a good return you need particularly good hand-eye coordination, anticipation, consistent strike zone, balance, quickness, footwork, etc.). So a relative donkey, like Lukas Rosol can beat a great player from his serve, here and there, but win the tournament, no chance - not without a great return. There are a lot more players out there with great serves than players with great returns of serve - and it's no coincidence that they tend to do most of the winning. That's because it's harder to do than serve well, and as such it is a more telling factor in who wins the tournament - particularly on grass where the serve is helped so much by the surface, and everyone looks like a world beater with their serve - by the same token, only the best of the best appear to have even decent returns on grass.

My point here is that I'm trying to dispel the myth that the serve is the key/critical/deciding success factor on grass - it's not at all, it's the return. Some would limit their agreement if (and only if ) the serves are equal, but the serves are rarely equal and frequently the player with the better serve loses to the player with the better return. Therefore, it's pretty clear that the return is the key success factor and not the serve - of course your return has to be pretty good to beat a player with a great serve, especially on grass...but that's more to my point of why so few players have what it takes to win Wimbledon.

We've all fallen prey to the blurring of the lines defining the quality of the serve - if there is such a thing as a good serve, there must logically be great serves and below average serves - let's not lump everyone into sufficient/good/great serving category, cite Wimbledon champions (none of whom have a poor serve) and then claim that the key factor is something that they share in common with 90% of professional tennis players.

A key success factor is something that distinguishes players who've had success from those who have not. To point to the serve, which a large portion of players who have not won Wimbledon, and likely will never win, isn't informative. The return, however, is very probative. I happen to think that while the serve is the easiest stroke in tennis, because it's ball in hand, the return might be the hardest (because you must use a broad range of skills to respond to the easiest stroke in the game to hit at you), and by this logic, I am of the belief that the return, particularly at Wimbledon, where even the worst serves in tennis get a lot of help, is the most important stroke to winning the tournament.

THE DECLINE OF THE MASTERS

Nope, I'm not writing a column about golf's version of Wimbledon - I'm talking about the year-end championships that used to have all the cachet of a major, and had the one thing that the modern incarnation does not - interest outside of tennis.

The year-end championships of tennis have gone through so many iterations over the years, it's hard, even for the most ardent fan, to keep track of what it has been and become over the years. So imagine the difficulty of getting space "above the fold" in major sports media today, which is the surest measure of the popularity of the game outside the game.

The ATP World Tour Finals, one of the most idiotically named championships in the history of tennis, is the current version of what used to be known as "The Masters", and until 1990, it was magically more than just a tennis tournament - it was an event that the sports world followed almost as closely as the crowned jewels of the game (the four majors). And in a rare moment of agreement with John McEnroe, I think the move away from Madison Square Garden was the beginning of the end for the luster that once accompanied the event.

Of course, in his native-New Yorker narcissism, he thinks the answer is to move it back to the Garden, and while I think he's on the right track (and wouldn't necessarily disagree with such a move), I think the event is missing something that the other majors have in abundance - an identity. And it is by finding its identity that I think this once great sporting event can return to the pantheon of great sporting events, where it belongs.

In 1970, two years following the advent of open tennis, Grand Prix tennis had been initiated with the help of Jack Kramer, as an answer to the disparate hodge-podge of semi-professional circuits controlled by anyone with enough money to cobble together what passed as a tour. It competed with the WCT championships held in Dallas, which was based on results from the WCT tour, a tour run by Lamar Hunt as an answer to the open invitation to Grand Prix tennis which was controlled by the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF - the ancestor of the modern ITF).

The first year-end championships were held in Tokyo, which happened to be the highest bidder, and in their never ending, insatiable appetite for a bigger payday, the event moved six times in six years, to tennis hotbeds such as Paris, Barcelona, Boston, Melbourne and Houston - where it promptly had a problem.

Nobody outside of tennis particularly cared about the event because the rules for qualification, the format of the tournament itself, and the players that participated, were about as reliable as predictions of the weather. In the end, the perceived value of the tournament, outside of tennis, suffered badly, and so too did the event.

Then in 1977, somebody came up with a brilliant idea - bring the mountain to Moses. For the first time in a string of 13 glorious years, the Masters was played at Madison Square Garden - then the mecca of sports entertainment - and with it came all the cachet the tournament could hope for. Sure, along the way there were questions about the format, the rules of qualification, and of course the quality of the tennis. As a matter of fact, very often the tournament was played in the year after the year for which qualification was determined - so late it was in the tennis calendar. And complaints about injuries and fatigue were seen as just a subterfuge for players to tank some matches in favor of bigger fish to fry.

Nevertheless it was an event that people outside of tennis covered with almost as much gusto as the majors. And why wouldn't they - initially the popularity of Connors, Borg and Vilas, would give way to the triumvirate of Connors, Borg and McEnroe, and then Connors, McEnroe and Lendl. In all three cases, the differences in personalities and the personal conflicts between some or all the heads of the tennis families provided the base, spine and glitter to make it a great event. But as the top players got old, retired, or lost their personal animus towards one another, the event petered. And as playing at Madison Square Garden had less and less of a cachet, the brilliant minds at the newly anointed emperors of tennis (the ATP tour) decided to chase the money and move the event in 1990 to, where else...Frankfurt.

Huh?

That's right, given that the game's dominant players were becoming predominantly European, and given the money they offered to host the tournament, Germany became the new mecca of tennis. First it was Frankfurt from 1990 to 1995, then that other internationally known metropolis, Hanover, hosted the event for a stretch from 1995 to 1999. And as you might expect, despite the star power of Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras and everyone else, the tournament slowly lost its identify, and as a result (in my opinion) its luster outside of tennis.

Along the way, it just so happened that when the ITF was frozen out of control of everything but the majors and Davis Cup, they decided (quite rightly) there was a gaping hole that they could fill, and promptly initiated a competing year-end championship called the Grand Slam Cup. And because one thing the ITF is very good at is hiding behind its tradition, they at least had the good sense to keep it in Munich for nine years from 1990 to 1999 as well (although they couldn't resist locating the tournament in Germany - where the money obviously was at the time). The other thing they're good at is hiding in front of prize money, but this time, they smartened up and put up an astronomical $3M payday to the winner of the Grand Slam Cup if they also happened to win a slam that same year. At the time, this was an astronomical sum of money - more than any of the majors, and way more than the ATP Tour World Championships.

As the ATP's year end championships slowly but surely caught up with the prize money of the Grand Slam Cup (money problems caused them to reduce their prize money to make it closer to the ATP's season finale), the latter suffered, and had to change when the event was held, as well as include a women's championship for two years 1998 and 1999 (both not surprisingly won by Venus Williams and Serena Williams respectively), in an effort to remain relevant. It didn't, and eventually was subsumed by the Tennis Masters Cup in 2000 - itself an homage to both year-end championships. They all figured half of a big pot of money is better than all of a small one, so they did the only sensible thing and merged.

But once the Masters moved from MSG, and the Grand Slam Cup lost its purely capitalist appeal, what was left was an event that served as nothing more than a book-end to the ATP tour's nine flagship events, and an anti-climactic denouement to the year's major quadrilogy. This interested nobody beyond the game. Within the game, it can be argued that the importance of the tournament was not only maintained, but improved. After all, points started to count towards ranking and the money was hard to ignore. But something was missing...an identity.

So here's my solution.

If this tournament is really all about (dare I say it) the money, then don't be ashamed of it - embrace it! Put the prize money at $10M for the winner if he is both a grand slam champion and finishes the year ranked #1 - you could clip off $2M for each of the two conditional compensations, and simply call the winner, if it happens to be someone like Nikolay Davydenko (instead of Federer, Nadal or Djokovic), the $6 million dollar man...I'm only half joking, by the way.

Also, they should put it at the same venue and leave it there for at least 10 years (in fact if they had a brain, would build a venue that they could keep it there forever). That way, the event and the venue would both benefit from the cachet of the other, and would help to perpetuate the other's viability. This business of chasing the money by changing the location every time someone shows up with a bigger check is the very reason that the women are now furtively begging to join the men at the O2. Although the venue is new, it has sufficient razamatazz to be an event in and of itself. The problem is that, at the moment, it's carrying the tennis. They should each do their own share of the heavy lifting and that's where the last component would come in.

Put the points to the champion on par with winning a major and make the final a 5-set match. Then the money and the points won't seem to have been capriciously handed out to someone who got hot for 8 sets. Making the final a 5-set match, and putting major-level points on the table would be the final piece to the puzzle making this tournament everything it should be both inside and outside of tennis.

So, $10M to the winner, major-level points, a consistent venue and a 5-set final. Now who could ignore that?