"If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best"

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"If your serve is good, you can win on grass even without playing your best"

I thought that was an interesting quote from Nadal after his win in Suttgart

http://www.tennis-tourtalk.com/?p=2796

Yes

Win as in winning one match? Possible, but not winning the title, esp at the slam, on clay.

On HC, the probability is > than on clay but < on grass.

In my opinion you need an excellent all-round game to win on grass - a serve that is firing on all cylinders, a return of big serves with interest and great movement on what can be a slippy, tricky surface. If, during Wimbledon fortnight, one of those strengths wane there is, if you meet an on-form player, you will lose.

Like I said, you need different skill sets to win on different surfaces, be it grass or clay. On grass, not much rallying but on clay rallying skills, point construction, are more essential, one also needs to have good movement on the surface if not its hard to win, on grass and on clay.

Belovedluckyboy wrote:Like I said, you need different skill sets to win on different surfaces, be it grass or clay.  On grass, not much rallying but on clay rallying skills, point construction, are more essential, one also needs to have good movement on the surface if not its hard to win, on grass and on clay.

Exactly - different skill sets. Some people seem to discount serving well as a skill and only count the skills that they like to see as 'proper' tennis skills.

Yep, serving well is a skill; returning well too. Its the contrast of styles that makes tennis more interesting : Fed vs Ivo; Dolgo vs Rafa; Kei vs Jerzy; even Simon vs Raonic.

“He [Groth] can stay in the match just by serving,” said Federer. “But the only thing I really had to change was my returning. The service games I can control myself: what to do on second serves, what to do on first serves. That’s the biggest effort for me when I play a big-server – understanding those patterns. I also needed to focus on my own serve and I did that well.”

http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/news/articles/2015-07-04/federer_into_the_fourth_round.html

laverfan wrote:“He [Groth] can stay in the match just by serving,” said Federer. “But the only thing I really had to change was my returning. The service games I can control myself: what to do on second serves, what to do on first serves. That’s the biggest effort for me when I play a big-server – understanding those patterns. I also needed to focus on my own serve and I did that well.”

http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/news/articles/2015-07-04/federer_into_the_fourth_round.html

Thank you, laverfan.  Obviously you need to be able to do a lot of things to win a major, any major.  But at the major where everyone's serve is a little better, it is very difficult to distinguish yourself from the field with the serve, and frequently the player with the better serve loses on grass precisely because a good return is the key success factor in that it can neutralize what ought to be an insurmountable advantage.

Nobody wins any major with just a good serve, but a lot of players have won Wimbledon with a serve that wasn't anywhere near the best in the field - the same cannot be said for players with returns that aren't anywhere near the best in the field. The bones of those players a buried all over the outer courts at the All England club every year, while the best returners in the game are usually the ones lifting the trophy at the end of the tournament.