Luxilon, Gustavo Kuerten, 1997, and the End of Serve-and-Volley Tennis

[DonRocks]

I knew that racket technology had ended serve-and-volley tennis, but I never really knew if there was a specific "moment in time" when it ended. 

Well, there was - in 1997, when Gustavo Kuerten won his first French Open using Luxilon polyester strings.

This article says it better than I can - especially the video which shows Kuerten's returns dipping down at Sampras' feet at the net in a 2000 tournament. Because of these strings, players were now able to swing as hard as they could, off both wings, and almost never miss. Look at what the game is today - the best players can rally for hundreds of shots without missing, all the while swinging as hard as they can swing. Tennis is now a sport of who is in the best physical condition - there are twelve-year-old kids who can hit better ground strokes than many college players could a generation ago. 

Oct 8, 2015 - "1997: Gustavo Kuerten's Game-Changing Win with Polyester Strings" by Steve Tignor on tennis.com

Pete Sampras was *so much better* than Gustavo Kuerten that it was a travesty that he lost, and Sampras will quite possibly be remembered as the last pure serve-and-volley player in history, thanks to these strings. A quote from the article:

"By 2000, Kuerten was No. 1 in the world, and some of his fellow players began to whisper that his string should be banned for giving him an unfair advantage. Tour stringer Nate Ferguson has said that as he watched Guga dip passing shots at the feet of Pete Sampras on his way to the title at the Tennis Masters Cup (now called the World Tour Finals) in Lisbon in 2000, he wondered how anyone would ever be able to rush the net again. Ferguson’s thought proved prescient: Fifteen years later, now that polyester is the standard on tour, virtually everyone rips the ball with pace and spin the way Kuerten did back then, and few dare to venture to the net. The feel of natural gut is out; the power of poly is in."

The game has been forever changed. I think it's a very similar concept to "clap skates" - the speed skates with blades that were only attached to the boot from the front, which interestingly caught on around the same time as Luxilon strings did in tennis (and, not long before Mark McGuire hit 70 home runs). This article explains it very well:

Feb 15, 2014 - "How a Century-Old Skate Design Completely Changed Modern Speed Skating" by Bring Back (?) Anthony Mason on kinja.com

I'm not being judgmental here - however, one thing technological advances do (as is touched on in the speed-skating article) is take away valid comparisons with past and present generations. Baseball - steroids excepted - is the one sport where the equipment was mandated to stay basically the same as it was almost one-hundred years ago, so it's much more reasonable (and fun!) to compare Ty Cobb to Rickey Henderson, than it is to compare Jack Kramer to Roger Federer. 

[Steve R.]

I agree.

By the way, Tignor is a member of the small Brooklyn tennis club where I play (The Knickerbocker Field Club).  Very good player himself.

[DonRocks]

 

[DonRocks]

I suspect only players older than 50, who were playing tennis in the 1970s, will remember spaghetti stringing, but it was a big, scandalous issue back then, and this is an interesting article about it:

Feb 5, 2013 - "Question of the Day: Revisiting the Spaghetti Racquet" by Justin DiFelciantonio on tennis.com

At this point, I agree that the issue needs to be revisited - short of something mechanical (a gearing mechanism, for example, or a hinge-like arrangement), why *not* spaghetti stringing?

I never realized that the owner of Fischer Racquets, Werner Fischer (*), introduced the concept.

(*) Wow - that page mentions "Snauwaert": There's a name I haven't thought about in decades. Does anyone remember PDP? Roscoe Tanner used to use one, and I was *so excited* when I got mine when I was about 14-15 years old, even though it was just a cheap piece of aluminum with nice-looking orange-and-white enamel trim. Same level of excitement when I got my first "Vilas" racquet (which was a piece of junk, but boy, was that a gorgeous wooden racquet).

 

[NiceDocter]

GEEEE YAAAARE MOHHHHH !!!!!!

[DonRocks]

GEEEE YAAAARE MOHHHHH !!!!!!

(My brother's making fun of a heavy-topspin kick I got on, imitating Vilas, as a kid playing ping-pong - I honestly can't believe he remembers this.)

To highlight just how much the game has changed, here's a rally between Björn Borg and Guillermo Vilas (the two top clay-court players in the world) in the 1978 French Open final. Imagine either of these two playing Rafael Nadal a few years ago - the first shot they hit that landed shorter than six inches from the baseline, they'd be off to the races, doing side-to-side wind-sprints, until 2-3 shots later, they wouldn't be able to get to the ball.

This takes away absolutely nothing from the greatness of Borg and Vilas - different champions in different eras using different technology. My guess is that if Nadal was forced to use *their* technology, he would lose - either from over-hitting, or from exhaustion induced by 30-shot rallies (he has 20-30 pounds more body-weight to haul around).

As a side note, it's amazing how many of their shots land inside the service line.

[NiceDocter]

Actually there was a "Nadal-type" guy back in the day that most everyone seems to have forgotten...... a lefty with a giant arm and heavy kicks off both wings...... and he was dominant on clay for a period of time.   The man?    Thomas Muster, known in his time as The King of Clay!  Im almost certain he would have done amazingly well with todays racket and string technologies.

[DonRocks]

5 hours ago, NiceDocter said:

Actually there was a "Nadal-type" guy back in the day that most everyone seems to have forgotten...... a lefty with a giant arm and heavy kicks off both wings...... and he was dominant on clay for a period of time.   The man?    Thomas Muster, known in his time as The King of Clay!  Im almost certain he would have done amazingly well with todays racket and string technologies.

As soon as you said "Nadal-type" guy, I knew you were talking about Thomas Muster. He was a beast, like Nadal without the technology - clean-cut guy, who grunted on every shot and gave everything he had. Won the 1995 French Open, was known as "The King of Clay," winning 11 out of 12 clay-court tournaments that year, and was ranked #1 in the world. Amazingly, he never won one single round at Wimbledon - that's how specialized his game was: hell-bent on running down every shot, and returning with all the pace and topspin he could (forgive me) muster. Here's a highlight-video of him taking down Sampras in 1991 on clay - you can see the Nadal in him.

 

[DonRocks]

Here are the finals in that 1997 French Open: Gustavo Kuerten v. Sergei Bruguera:

 

[DonRocks]

May 24, 2017 - "20 Years Ago in Paris, Kuerten's New String Sent Tennis World Spinning" by Steve Tignor on tennis.com