Many of you will remember that in my post-final post, I talked about the "service-driven" game and the appeal it holds for me. If I were a little more clever - or under less deadline pressure - I might have called it the "purpose-driven" game - echoing the title of the popular self-help book.
Roger Federer dropped a quote in his press conference that seems relevant to this subject, when he was asked if he were a "significantly" better player than he was a few years ago, and to elaborate on his answer. He said:
The operative phrase - make that word - in this analysis is "string." This "string generation" The Mighty Fed is talking about is the current crop of ball-banging baseliners who string with the polyester string, Luxilon. This sounds like some strange material from Superman's home planet of Krypton, and to certain kinds of players it is indeed something like Kryptonite.
Generally, Luxilon is combined with gut, with gut in the east-west grommets and polyester/Luxilon in the north-south. But take heed, TMF uses it in the opposite configuration, which is truly weird because spin is generated by the north-south (aka main) strings, which would neutralize the said advantages of the polyster strings. That a player of TMF's stature - not to mention old-school attitudes about racket-head size, electronic line-calling, Wimbledon attire and even manners (I'll be the dude even insists on picking up the tab when he and Mirka dine out!) - would attribute such a watershed impact to strings should be enough to make the most diehard Luddite sit up and take notice.
My Tennis and New York Sun colleague, Tomahawk Perrotta, did a fascinating piece on racket technology and how it "saved tennis" for the the Atlantic Monthly (the bad news is that to get it for free, you have to either be a subscriber, or purchase an on-line subscription). It seems to boil down to this: Luxilon is, in Tom's words, "stiffer and deader." Thus, players can swing harder and not only keep the ball in play more consistently, but also generate more spin (because of the racket head speed). But because the strings are relatively dead, the ball loses pace and drops more quickly and, of course, sharply - the latter in direct proportion to the amount of spin applied, because balls hit with topspin quite literally "spin out" and drop, rapidly losing velocity once that critical distance to the far court is covered.
Some advocates claim that Luxilon imparts more spin because it "grips" the ball for a longer period, but Tom told me that most tennis scientists pooh-pooh that notion and say there is no evidence to support it.
TMF's comments dovetailed nicely with part of a conversation I had earlier in the tournament, with popular wing-nut Dmitry Tursunov, after he lost to Tim Henman. We got to talking about the purpose-driven game, and he conceded that he felt a certain amount of pressure playing Henman, because so few player chip-and-charge or serve-and-volley the way Gentleman Tim does - or did (Henman's last main-tour type appearance will be in the UK vs. Croatia Davis Cup relegation match, in just about 10 days time). Of facing an attacker, Tursunov said:
I don't recall anyone discussing this issue of a server having too little time to get to the net; the dynamic always seems to be described in terms of the receiver. But it certainly explains something that I wrote about before, which is that Isner prefers coming in behind his second ball, and likes to lay back to look for the big approach shot off returns of his first serves (mainly because players are content just to block back that first serve, leaving Isner with a juicy ball to tee off on).
I wish I had asked Tursunov to weigh-in on how Luxilon impacts his analysis, but I guess it will have to wait. Meanwhile, is it possible that strings can be even more influential on style than racket composition or head size? Why not? But it's a little odd that at the end of the day, the ultimate variable probably is the most obvious, simple, un-technological one: ball pressure and size.