The Net Game – the volley and overhead smash-represents the ultimate attack in tennis. It is the crushing offensive that either blasts an opponent off the court or wrecks itself by the very fury of its own attack. In that case it is likely to end in physical exhaustion, collapse, and futile effort.
It is of primary importance in men’s tennis but, while valuable, is not nearly so important in women’s. This is due entirely to the physical factors. Most men can stand the strain of a net attack for three sets, and a big percentage can even go the long route of five sets, but very few women have the physical stamina to go to the net consistently for three hard sets.
No one can be a completely well-equipped player without an adequate net game, but once more I state emphatically, the net game is secondary to the ground game. After all, under the rules of tennis, there must be at least one ground stroke before a volley or a smash can be played.
It is the tremendous overemphasis on the net game today, with its resultant loss of good solid ground strokes, that is largely responsible for the deplorable state of junior tennis in the United States. However, no matter how strongly I feel that the drive and the slice must be brought back to their proper place in tennis, I must not make the mistake of underestimating the tremendous value of the net game in attack. The net is the ultimate goal of a player, once he decides to attack, and no matter how long he may have to defend or manoeuvre to get there, he must never los e sight of that fact.
The point I want to make is that he cannot afford to go there carelessly, indiscriminately, or all the time. His advance to the net should always be made after careful, proper preparation when his opponent has been placed on the defensive, and when the chances of making a winning shot are better than fifty-fifty. He should never go to the net just because someone told him it should invariably be done. He should do it when his own intelligence directs it, because he has worked up his attack to that point. When you go to the net, you do it for one thing only: to win the point outright with a kilI. Never defend at the net. Never give your opponent another chance af ter your first shot if you can help it, but if you do, the next shot must win or lose outright.
The net game is sudden death. If you have any timidity, any fear of error, any thought of defending, stay away from that net. The very daring and audacity of the net attack is what makes the galleries love to watch it. No players had more gallery appeal than Jean Borotra and Vincent Richards, the two greatest net players of all time. It is the net rushing of Pancho Gonzales that has made him such a gallery pleaser.
Only the daring and brilliance of the net games of Bobby Falkenberg, Jimmy Brink, and the others of their type give them fame and bring in the crowds to watch them, because they are not really first-class tennis players. The beauty and skill of the all-around games of Fred Perry, Don Budge, and Ellsworth Vines were lost sight of by most spectators, who saw only their crashing overheads or amazing volleys.
I think one reason modern tennis carries such a tremendous overemphasis on the net game is that young players like the howl of applause from the gallery that follows so me particularly spectacular smash or volley. In the glow it gives them, they forget their dismal errors off the ground. Yet, to the expert eye, the subtle and clever games of such players as Riggs and Parker and the quieter moments of Budge and particularly Perry bring more joy in the artistry displayed.