In American football, it’s said that a good defense beats a good offense.  American football, it seems, is a game of errors.  The defense attempts to make the offense produce errors that cause the ball to go from the opposition’s defense to a favorable position for their own offense.  For a long time, tennis was a game of offense.  The Australians and Americans decided the best way to win games was constant forays to the net.  Get to the net, hit a volley, win the point.

It made sense.  Although the volley came with a fair amount of risk–you can be passed low, passed high, lobbed–its reward was equally high.  By cutting off the amount of time to react to the ball by roughly half, the volleyer has struck a winning blow with minimal effort.  Indeed, the problem of a successful net approach, typically a slice shot aimed down the line, was not successfully solved by players of the wooden era.  With continental grips, flat shots, a low bouncing surface (grass), and a lack of understanding of how to improve footwork and speed, players either sliced their passes, took their chances with a flat shot, or invariably, lobbed their shot.

Although clay courters have been around for a long time, the French Open having been around for decades, many of the playing surfaces around the world were played on grass.  Clay courters of the day never seemed to get grass, and grass courters played just well enough on clay to win the Slam.  Much of the Australian and perhaps American advantage stemmed from a group of highly talented players that played one another and made each other better.  This was how the Swedes, post-Borg, got better.  It was how the Americans got good in the 1990s.  It is how the Spaniards and the French and the Russians have improved.

Perhaps this is why it takes a loner to redefine the game, why Bjorn Borg, who came from a country that was more about table tennis and hockey than tennis, would change how tennis was played.

Borg’s two other favorite pasttimes where hockey, a sport where you used two hands to slap a shot, and table tennis, where loopy shots with topspin were a key skill for success.  Borg was not only in great athletic shape, a guy who could run and run, but he was disciplined and he hit topspin on both sides.  This meant he could hit a passing shot that dipped to the service line.  A player in those days could either try for a sharp flat angle and hope to get the timing just right, or hit it down the line and hope not to hit too deep.  Such was the nature of a flat or slice passing shot.  With his speed and his accuracy, the passing shot meant the baseliner had a chance to beat an attacking player, and this was critical, because it meant a clay courter could now make inroads on grass and eventually on hardcourts.

Even as Connors pushed the notion of a power baseliner to its limits–he was a player that hit hard and flat and on the rise, Connors was still limited by players being able to chase down his shots.  Connors knew that coming to net, whether it be on a punishing shot off a short ball or whether it be a sneak serve and volley play, was still the way to win a point decisively.  It was once said that only four players could beat you from the baseline using power and that was Borg, Connors, Vilas, and Lendl.  But it was only Lendl who routinely (for his day) hit winners from the baseline.

Ken Rosewall was asked, during the Australian Open, whether Roger Federer’s style was a classic one, reminiscent of the way he played.  Tennis reporters have often likened Federer’s shots to the good old days of tennis, but Rosewall, knowing better, said it was not.  And he’s right.  Tennis in Rosewall’s day was about getting to net.  There were no power baseline rallies like there were today.  Federer may look elegantly effortless, but his shots are built from a modern style of play, which is completely different from the mentality of Rosewall’s era.  The only resemblance might be that slice backhand (which Federer uses as a kind of stalling play to get him back into position or to provide a change of pace) or just his smoothness of motion.  Rosewall would not recognize the flurry of winners that Federer could make with his forehand, nor the amazing topspin backhand angles that would normally appear to be passing shots, but are used in baseline exchanges.  Such shots would defy the Rosewallian era of tennis physics.

With all but the best volleyers unable to attack Borg effectively, Borg’s challenges came primarily from other baseliners, players such as Lendl, Vilas, Harold Solomon.  Such players joined the Borgian style.  They used fitness and topspin to create rallies that lasted 20, 30, 40 shots, waiting to see whose steadiness would reign supreme.  It was a neutral style that drove some fans mad, waiting for a bit of offensive.  It’s ironic that this dull style of play came during the peak of tennis popularity in the US, perhaps due to the coatstring effect of Riggs vs. King, effectively the Nancy and Tonya event that brought tennis to the attention of a feminist hungry American public.

Defense in Borg’s era was getting the ball back in a safe manner and passing the attacking volleyer as needed.  Borg was very rarely pressed by attacking players from the baseline because they generally didn’t exist.  Even Lendl would only hit a handful of winners in every match.  Lendl was nearly Borg’s equal in terms of consistency.  He’d only up his risk factor when playing McEnroe, forcing McEnroe to run hard and preventing him easy access to the net.  But by and large, defensive tennis was steady tennis.

That notion of defense has changed a great deal since the 1970s.  Once the power game developed, first with Lendl, then Becker, then Agassi, then players like Ivanisevic, Sampras, and then all the players since Federer, the number of winners started to go up.  Players could hit winners 10 feet behind the baseline.  Passing shots that were rarely made in the past became routine.  Once upon a time, a hard crosscourt approach lead to weak replies.  Sampras was the first to use his reverse forehand and make Agassi pay for hard shots hit crosscourt.  Sampras would whip them the other direction with even more angle, and leave Agassi flustered, wondering how a guy like Sampras was hitting the ball harder than Agassi.

And ever since then, the notion of defense has changed.  Defense means hitting a great shot when your opponent is trying to take the offensive.  In the past, defense was, getting the ball back one more time than your opponent.

The two top players at defense, these days, are Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray.  Although their styles are different, there are some similarities.

Rafa is Borg taken to some extreme that even Borg would not recognize.  Rafa hits the heaviest shots in tennis.  These topspin shots attack you like body blows, the balls kicking up, and kicking up.  When Rafa has gotten a weak shot, he will pound on your weakness over and over again until you toss up a really weak shot in which case he either heads to net and finishes the point, or hits a winner.   For all of Rafa’s power and accuracy, he plays incredibly conservative.  He’s no Fernando Verdasco who is happy to pounce at a chance to hit a winner whenever he gets too bored, which is quite often for Verdasco.

Rafa is also blessed with incredible raw athleticism.  The man can flat out run.  This is important because Rafa has to run.  Rafa’s innate fear of taking the attack to his opponent means he often feeds balls up the middle perhaps more than he should.  Yet, his topspin shots are troublesome enough for most players.  Many players have realized that the best way to play Rafa is to take the game to him, to try to go for big shots before Rafa can go for his big shots.  This high-risk strategy often leads to two results.  First, a player makes more errors, which is fine with Rafa because he’s as content waiting for the error as anyone in the game.  Second, even if the player hits an aggressive shot, Rafa is so good at hitting a powerful shot on defense that he is often at his most dangerous.

This ability to chase down balls ultimately hurts Rafa because he must do a lot of running and must be able to change direction abruptly, all things Rafa excels at, but the kind of style that is ultimately hard on Rafa’s body.  If Rafa played like Verdasco, he’d play quicker points and save his body more, but Verdasco’s go-for-broke style is so counter-intuitive to Rafa that it’s amazing both grew up in the Spanish system.

Rafa’s offense has always seemed more bullish than Murray’s style of play.  With his whipping forehand that swings above his head, the curving ball taking huge bounces off the ground, Rafa plays with a lot of energy.  If his balls appear to lack pace, it’s mostly because all that energy has been expended in service of spin.  And that spin is Rafa’s friend.

Although Rafa and Roger have been cast as rivals of the new millennium, their philosophy of ball striking is amazingly different.  Roger wants to hit winners.  He wants to hit a ball that you can’t touch.  Roger is all about the knockout punch.  Rafa doesn’t mind if you hit the ball.  He’s waiting to hit a shot with a weak reply.  Rafa makes body blows.  It’s much like a better player who hits his groundstrokes just a touch faster than you want to play against.  You’re struggling to get the ball back and do something with it, and eventually, it happens.  You bloop a ball up, and he takes advantage, punishing the ball repeatedly to your weaker side until you either miss or until he mercifully hits a winner.  In a way, it’s much like Borg minus the winners.

Murray’s approach resembles Rafa on the surface.  Just as Rafa is loathe to go for winners, and prefers to wait for errors, or at least, wait for an opportunity to hit you again and again, Murray is also loathe to go for winners.  Murray lacks Rafa’s bullish intensity.  He is not going to pound the ball over and over to a spot waiting for you to give up an easy shot.  He lacks both Rafa’s power and frankly his consistency.  Murray’s offensive shots are flatter in nature and therefore higher risk.

Therefore, Murray adapts to his own strengths, which is the variety of shot.  Murray will hit slice shots, or loop a ball with little pace up.  In a way, Rafa doesn’t mean to hit super loopy shots that land at the service line.  These shots are mostly Rafa playing safe and playing a bit nervous.  Murray, on the other hand, does seem to intentionally play this style of game.  He seems to want you to play a big shot so he can use his foot speed and his passing shots to win points.  Unlike Rafa, Murray’s mixing up of pace and spin are meant to confuse his opponents, who are typically used to hitting the same pace shot over and over and thus get grooved.

Like Rafa’s opponents, Murray’s opponents sometime try the same strategy.  They take the game to Murray, trying to hit inside out winners.  They understand Murray is quick, perhaps quicker than most anyone on tour, but even Murray can only run so fast.   Like Rafa, Murray tends to play from way back.  This means it’s difficult for Murray to play power shots, and indeed, it’s not really his game.  Murray has shown some desire to take shots closer into the baseline, but it seems, at the very highest levels of tennis, pros play in a comfort zone and they are loathe to leave it.

Could Rafa play like Verdasco, going for big shots willy-nilly?  He probably could, but the discomfort at the idea would probably lead to a torrent of errors that Rafa would quickly return to what makes him feel good about his own game.  Similarly, Murray can hit big shots, but he knows it would probably lead to a lot more errors.  His big game isn’t quite like Gonzalez or Verdasco whose effortless power is an outgrowth of a machismo style of play.  Murray going for big shots feels tacked-on, manufactured.  He can do it, and yet, if he had to rely on hitting big shots over and over, he’d likely become just one of the guys, good, but possibly not great.

It’s intriguing that Rafa has been criticized for his playing style, mostly because of the damage Rafa does to his body.  It’s a combination of his whippy groundstrokes with his athletic runs that give fans pause.  Somehow, despite running as much as Rafa, Murray’s style appears more graceful, built more from anticipation and balance than from raw, but unfinished talent.  Once upon a time there was a French-African figure skater by the name of Surya Bonaly.  Formerly a gymnast, Bonaly’s skating lacked elegance, but boy could she jump.  It was not a thing of beauty, but her athletic prowess that gave her power and precision, perhaps not unlike the Williams sisters.

In a way, Rafa is like Bonaly, though certainly better trained at his sport.  Murray, on the other hand, is lighter in his step.  Even so, it’s very difficult for a player to rely on sheer speed for his game.  Federer, for example, while still reasonably fleet of foot, appears to have worked a lot on his backhand, trying to make it a shot that can be, at the very least, modestly feared.  If he can do this, he will have less reason to run around his backhand, and less reason to rely on leaving huge swaths of court free for the taking.  This is an important transition to his game, one that he needs to do if he wants to keep playing into his 30s.

Historically, power players have stayed at the top.  Players like Connors and Agassi.  Lendl might have stayed their longer had he not developed back problems.  Big Bill Tilden and Pancho Gonzalez all continued to have success until past 40.  Quick players like Michael Chang had injuries and began to fade as they got older.  Players like Davydenko have learned to hit on the rise.  Davydenko often plays a lot of shots up the middle until the rally starts moving to big angles in which case he either hits a bigger angle or precisely aims it down the line.  A combination of court positioning and looking for opportunities to end the point have lead to Davydenko’s success.

It seems Murray, for all his defensive prowess, has to think along these lines too.  As he gets older, all that running would seem to catch up to him.  Fortunately, Murray has spent a great deal of his training on staying balanced which presumably leads to fewer injuries and better shots.

Murray and Rafa have produced two distinct forms of defense, but they have similarities.  Both seem more comfortable waiting for the other player to attack before they hit the great shots.  They differ in their style.  Rafa isn’t trying to play a tricky game to goad his opponents for the attack, but his conservative style often leaves balls up high asking to be spanked.  Murray, by contrast, does play a tricky game, providing off-pace shots that also beg to be spanked.  Whether it’s done intentionally or not, both rely a fair bit on their opponents making the first move, and although both are capable of going for big shots, there is a hesitancy to do so.

In this respect, their style is a kind of throwback to Borg, even though Borg to Murray/Nadal is as far a transition as Rosewall to Federer.  Defense is still alive, albeit transmogrified into a defense/offense hybrid, an animal that is at its most dangerous when trapped.