Attack-first tennis is back, as Sinner's and Sabalenka's Australian Open wins indicate
Old-school fans of offensive-minded tennis should find a lot to like in the way the game’s new stars—including Rybakina and Alcaraz—are bringing the heat.
Last weekend, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka clinched their Grand Slam title runs in Australia the same way: With a forehand flourish.
Each shot was characteristic of the player.
Sinner spotted a small opening down the line and immediately launched a fizzing missile in that direction. The ball landed a couple of inches inside the baseline, where even the long arms of Daniil Medvedev couldn’t reach it.
Sabalenka’s winning crosscourt forehand against Zheng Qinwen was set up by a strong first serve out wide, which opened up the rest of the court. During her two weeks in Melbourne, Sabalenka proved herself to be one of the new masters of the serve-plus-one: a potent one-two punch that can end the rally in three shots. It made sense for her to go back to her bread-and-butter in the end.
These were just two swings of the racquet among thousands that we saw Down Under, but they were indicative of a trend in today’s pro game that may not be widely recognized yet: Attack-first tennis is back.
You can see it at the top of the rankings, where Sinner and Sabalenka share space with two other aggressive-minded young stars, Carlos Alcaraz and Elena Rybakina. And you could see it in the results at the Australian Open.
On the men’s side, Sinner overpowered two steadier, higher-ranked opponents, Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev, in the semis and final. Alexander Zverev, usually known for his chess-match caginess from the baseline, beat Alcaraz by going into full-on attack mode. Medvedev nearly won the title by ambushing Sinner with a surprise show of aggression through the first two sets of the final.
On the women’s side, Sabalenka finally showed that her offense can overcome the defense of her nemesis, Coco Gauff. Zheng, another heavy hitter, made the final after stopping the Cinderella run of qualifier Dayana Yastremska, a woman who never met a ball she didn’t want to pulverize.
As I wrote in the middle of the tournament, the New Attack inspired a new stat at the Australian Open: “Hunting third-shot forehands,” which is a measure of the percentage of times a player hits a forehand on the first shot after the serve. The recent turn toward aggression grew from the analytics-based insight that most rallies—despite widespread complaints about their interminable length—last from 1 to 4 shots. The faster you can get to your best offensive shot—which in most cases is the forehand—the better off you are. Instead of passively rallying, players now are urged to take the point over with their forehands as soon as possible and use it to send their opponents scrambling. (As for the style of play we saw at the Aussie Open specifically, it has also helped that the courts have gradually been made faster at Melbourne Park over the years.)
This stylistic evolution should be good news for fans of all ages. Young ones should like the slam-bang action, which won’t overly tax their phone-diminished attention spans. Older ones should appreciate the return to a semblance of the much-mourned serve-and-volley days of yore, when initiative and risk-taking were rewarded.
To me, one of the oddities of the ATP’s Big 3 era was how many fans and players of a certain age said they didn’t really like the tennis—Roger Federer excluded—that was played during this putative Golden Age. While Federer’s one-handed backhand and will to move forward were lauded as a throwback, a lot of people saw rivals Nadal, Djokovic, and Andy Murray as examples of an overly physical, defensive-minded style that turned a beautiful game into a brutal grind.
Pat Cash, one of the last of the pure serve-and-volley champions, spoke for the old guard at the height of Big 3 domination, in 2013.
“Nowadays they all settle down and say, ‘OK, this is going to be two hours of baseline rallies,’” Cash said. “The guy who outlasts the other one wins. It’s taken a lot of the skill out of tennis.”
It’s true that Nadal, Djokovic and Murray are instinctive baseliners who win with steadiness and stamina. And it’s true that their success inspired younger players like Medvedev and Zverev to do the same. But as their careers progressed, Nadal and Djokovic also upped their aggression levels, and both can be seen as progenitors of the serve-plus-one. Nadal, despite his reputation as a retriever, ranges far and wide to find a forehand, while Djokovic channeled analytics into a more offensive philosophy.
Can those nostalgic fans, who still yearn for a more classic style, find what they’re looking for in the attack-first mentalities of Sinner, Alcaraz, Sabalenka and Rybakina? I hope so. Even if these players don’t charge straight to the net, they hit every ball with purpose, and don’t waste any time—theirs or ours—making something happen. That’s probably as close to the good old days as we’re going to get.