The Serve-and-Volleyer in the Modern Game: Mostly Extinct — or Just Hiding?

In the early 1990s, serve-and-volley tennis was a dominant style. Patrick Rafter, Pete Sampras, Goran Ivanišević, Stefan Edberg — these players built world-class careers around hitting a serve and immediately approaching the net. Wimbledon was effectively unwinnable without serve-and-volley capacity. Even on clay, the style had its champions.

Thirty years later, the style appears extinct. Almost no top-50 male player serves and volleys as a primary tactic. The percentage of serve-and-volley points in pro matches has dropped from 40-60% on fast surfaces in the early 1990s to under 5% today. The style is, by appearances, dead.

But the appearance is misleading. Serve-and-volley is not extinct — it has shifted from a primary style to a tactical weapon. The players who still use it deploy it strategically, on specific points, against specific opponents. The full-style serve-and-volleyer is gone. The serve-and-volley tactic is very much alive, just in a different form.

This article is about what happened to the style, why it changed, and what serve-and-volley looks like today.

What Killed Pure Serve-and-Volley

Several technical and equipment changes hostility to the style accumulated in the 2000s.

Cause 1: Better returns. Polyester strings allowed returners to swing harder and produce more topspin on returns. The aggressive baseline return — taking the ball early, hitting it deep at the approaching server’s feet — became reliable enough that serving and approaching was harder. Returners stopped just blocking the ball; they attacked it.

Cause 2: Slower surfaces. Wimbledon’s grass was changed in 2001 to play slower (different grass type, denser turf). The US Open hard courts became slower. The Australian Open courts shifted. Faster surfaces had favored serve-and-volley by making returns weaker and giving the volley its full speed advantage. Slower surfaces equalized the geometry.

Cause 3: Heavier topspin baseline play. Modern aggressive baseliners hit forehand passes with topspin that drops sharply over the volleyer’s head or into their feet. The geometric difficulty of volleying a heavy topspin pass became substantial. Net play stopped being the high-percentage choice against a competent baseliner.

Cause 4: Athletic returners with better movement. Modern players cover the court better, recover faster, and turn defensive returns into counter-attacks. The serve-and-volleyer’s advantage depended on time pressure on the returner. Better movement neutralized that pressure.

Cause 5: Coaching trends. Junior players in the 2000s and 2010s were taught baseline-first tennis. The serve-and-volley skills (volley technique, mid-court positioning, approach shots) were de-emphasized. Even players who might have suited the style never developed it.

Together, these factors collapsed the percentage of points where serve-and-volley was the winning tactic. By 2015, the style was essentially gone from the top tier.

Why It’s Not Actually Extinct

Despite the disappearance of pure serve-and-volley as a primary style, the tactic remains useful. Tour-level analysis shows the following patterns:

Pattern 1: Big servers deploy it as a surprise weapon. Players with strong first serves (above 195 km/h average) occasionally serve-and-volley on first serves to disrupt the returner’s expectations. The element of surprise produces points the returner wasn’t ready for.

Pattern 2: It’s used at strategic moments. Break points, set points, important moments — these are when an unexpected serve-and-volley can win a critical point. The mental disruption is part of the tactic.

Pattern 3: It works against specific returners. Players who stand deep to return and rely on long defensive returns are vulnerable to serve-and-volley. The server cuts off the time their return needed.

Pattern 4: Doubles still uses it heavily. In doubles, where the net player’s positioning is part of the formation, serve-and-volley has remained a primary tactic. The court is wider, the angles are different, and the second player at the net creates pressure the singles game doesn’t.

So the style hasn’t disappeared. It has been compressed into a smaller percentage of the points where it’s the right call, deployed by players who know when those moments are.

The Players Who Still Use It

A few examples illustrate the current state:

Maxime Cressy built a recent career around primarily serve-and-volley tennis on faster surfaces. His ranking reached the top 50 with this approach. The style is viable as a primary tactic for a player whose serve is genuinely elite — but it’s a narrow path.

Daniil Medvedev uses serve-and-volley as a tactical surprise weapon, particularly on second-serve returns and on first serves at critical moments. His use of it is part of his disruptive tactical repertoire.

Roger Federer (in his playing years) used a hybrid approach — primarily baseline-aggressive, but with frequent net approaches and occasional serve-and-volley, often deployed on big points.

The model isn’t “abandon serve-and-volley.” It’s “use it strategically.” The skill is in choosing when.

What Modern Net Play Looks Like

Even when serve-and-volley isn’t the primary tactic, modern net play has evolved. It’s now more selective: a player approaches the net when:

• They have hit a strong approach shot that limits the opponent’s passing options.
• They have driven the opponent off the court geometrically.
• The opponent is producing weak balls that can be put away with a volley.
• The match situation favors the risk-reward of the net approach.

Modern players who come to net frequently — Hubert Hurkacz, Marin Čilić, Stefanos Tsitsipas occasionally — do it after they have earned the geometric advantage. They don’t approach blindly. They approach when the situation justifies it.

This represents a kind of synthesis between baseline tennis and net play. The pure styles of 1990s tennis (serve-and-volleyer vs aggressive baseliner) have been replaced by hybrid players who use both as needed.

Could Pure Serve-and-Volley Return?

A speculative question worth considering: are there conditions under which pure serve-and-volley could return as a dominant style?

Possibilities:

Possibility 1: Surface speed shifts back. If tournaments started speeding their surfaces — particularly Wimbledon — the geometry would shift back toward serve-and-volley. This is unlikely but not impossible.

Possibility 2: New equipment technology favors the style. Future strings or racquets that produce different ball trajectories could shift the balance. Innovation continues.

Possibility 3: Junior coaching shifts. If a wave of juniors are deliberately developed in serve-and-volley style, with full mid-court coverage, slice approaches, and net presence, the style could re-emerge organically. This requires a paradigm shift in coaching, which is slow.

Possibility 4: A dominant player demonstrates new viability. Sports follow models. If a top-5 player wins a Grand Slam with serve-and-volley tennis, juniors will copy. The model needs an exemplar.

None of these are imminent. But sport styles cycle over decades, not seasons. The serve-and-volleyer may yet return.

What This Means for Amateur Players

For amateurs, the lessons of the serve-and-volley evolution are several:

Lesson 1: Net play is still useful. Even if pure serve-and-volley isn’t viable, occasional net approaches remain part of competitive tennis. Learning to volley, approach, and finish at net is part of a complete game.

Lesson 2: Serve-and-volley as a surprise weapon is teachable. An amateur with a decent serve can mix in serve-and-volley on a small percentage of points and gain a tactical edge through unpredictability.

Lesson 3: Don’t aspire to be a pure serve-and-volleyer. Building a primary style around serve-and-volley is a difficult path that even professionals struggle with. Aim for hybrid.

Lesson 4: Specifically target opponents vulnerable to it. Some amateur opponents (those who stand deep, hit weak returns, struggle with low balls) are still vulnerable to serve-and-volley. Identifying them and deploying the tactic against them produces wins.

A Note on Doubles

Doubles deserves its own mention. In doubles, the net is more central to the game than in singles. A team without a net player is structurally disadvantaged. Serve-and-volley remains a primary tactic for doubles servers — particularly the server’s partner approaching the net immediately after the serve.

If you play doubles, serve-and-volley skills are not optional. They are part of competent doubles play. The death of the singles serve-and-volleyer doesn’t apply.

One Thing to Do on Court Tomorrow

For your next service game, try one deliberate serve-and-volley point. Hit your first serve to a target you trust, immediately move forward as the ball is in flight, and play whatever the returner gives you at net.

Most players, doing this for the first time in years, are surprised by what they encounter. Sometimes the volley is easy. Sometimes the return is brutal and they get passed. Either way, the experience teaches you something about your current capacity for net play — and about what serve-and-volley actually demands in 2025 tennis.

The style isn’t extinct. It’s compressed. The skill of using it at the right moment remains valuable. Don’t abandon the net just because the era of pure serve-and-volley is over.

About the author: Emre Köse is a tennis coach at Beykoz Tenis Kulübü in Istanbul, with 12+ years on court. He holds a BSc in Coaching Education from Marmara University, Faculty of Sport Sciences.

Related in this series: The aggressive baseliner: the dominant modern archetype · The counter-puncher’s edge · Net play in singles

Selected reading:

• Brody, H., Cross, R., & Lindsey, C. (2002). The Physics and Technology of Tennis. Racquet Tech Publishing.
• Reid, M., Morgan, S., & Whiteside, D. (2016). Matchplay characteristics of Grand Slam tennis. Journal of Sports Sciences.
• O’Donoghue, P., & Ingram, B. (2001). A notational analysis of elite tennis strategy. Journal of Sports Sciences.