New Delhi: Back in the English summer of 1993, a certain gentleman by the name of Goran Ivanisevic from Croatia was locked in an absolute dogfight with local wild card entrant Chris Bailey, in a second round clash at the Championships.
At 6-5 in the fifth set, Bailey had match point on Ivanisevic's serve, but that was as close as he was going to get to knocking out the previous year's men's singles runner-up.
The Croat who had sent down 206 aces in the 1992 edition of the tournament served a fault which was followed by a 'let' since the ball touched the net cord. Believe it or not, he then came up with a second serve ace and went on to win the match which lasted for over three and a half hours.
Ivanisevic eventually went on to lift the trophy in 2001 which turned out to be his first and last grand slam title.
That was an era when booming serves and crisp volleys were the order of the day, much like the strawberries complimented the cream, and the umbrellas played their part along with the rain.
When it came to the classical serve and volley game on the men's circuit, one would not have to go beyond the centre court battles of Boris Becker (Germany) and Stefan Edberg (Sweden) in three successive Wimbledon finals from 1988-90.
One of the finest volleyers to have ever played the sport, Edberg had the better of his German rival in two of their three contests.
Though the women's game has yet to witness a natural volleyer after Martina Navratilova (Cze), things were quite different for the gentlemen as there was no dearth of huge servers and players who were competent at dealing with the ball on the full.
Nobody could find a big first serve when under pressure the way seven time champion Pete Sampras did, but even apart from him there were quite a few during that generation who were capable of sending down cannons.
Heading that list would be none other than Ivanisevic, but there were others which included Greg Rusedski, who mid way through his career decided that he preferred the Union Jack to the Canadian flag, and former winners Richard Krajicek and Michael Stich.
But that was then; today the art of volleying is almost non existent. Even with sixteen majors under his belt, Roger Federer chooses not to man the net on a regular basis even though he is well capable of doing so.
There is a school of thought that attributes the superior quality of racquets to baseliners ruling the roost, but in all fairness it's probably hesitation and the lack of will which encourages players to back pedal in the midst of a point, rather than moving forward and going for the kill.
Big hitting from the back of the court seems to have become the norm now, even on grass, which was unheard of during the Sampras era.
In fact, the sport during those days was so serve centric that it finished off the concept of rallies thereby making proceedings boring and monotonous for the viewers. There was even talk about doing away with the second serve on the men's circuit but the move did not come through.
However, it seems that the trend has shifted drastically from one extreme to the other, which is by no means doing any good to the game, as an integral aspect of it seems to have been taken out of the equation.
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