Over a decade since he stopped playing on the professional tennis tour, John McEnroe is still feuding with officials in the sport.
The target of his legendary wrath isn't the chair umpire or a linesman who made a questionable call. Instead, McEnroe, along with several other prominent retired players, is challenging the game's international governing body, the International Tennis Federation, to do something to rein in the power provided by today's tennis rackets. As the U.S. Open gets underway this week, McEnroe wonders if rackets haven't become too big a factor in the game.
"I think that the sport has lost something," said McEnroe of the changes wrought by the current rackets. "It's lost some subtlety, some strategy, some of the nuance."
There are surprisingly few rules governing the size, shape and construction of a tennis racket. According to the rules published by the ITF, a racket can't be longer than 29 inches, and the hitting surface of the racket can't be larger than 15.5 inches long and 11.5 inches wide.
Additionally, rules prohibit any device that changes the racket's shape or weight distribution. And no power sources, such as batteries or solar cells, are allowed to be incorporated into the racket.
Obviously, those guidelines allow for a great deal of experimentation. Rackets today allow players to launch the ball at previously unthinkable speeds, approaching 150 mph. They're high-tech weapons made of graphite, Kevlar, titanium and exotic alloys. There's even a racket with a chip built into the handle that allows the racket to stiffen upon impact with the ball.
All of this technology has led to major changes in how the game is played at the top level. Today, almost every player is content to stay at the baseline and pound the ball in long rallies with the opponent, hitting crushing shots with a great deal of topspin. The aggressive serve-and-volley game has almost completely disappeared.
"It's very hard to volley against all this pace and topspin," said Bud Collins, the tennis writer for the Boston Globe and the dean of American tennis journalists. "It's an easier game to play from the baseline because you aren't taking chances. That's what I don't like: No one is taking chances. It's very difficult to serve and volley. You have so many people playing the same way now, and that's the problem."
This homogeny means that a match like the 1980 Wimbledon final, which matched the serve-and-volleyer McEnroe with the baseliner Björn Borg, might never take place again. That match is widely considered the greatest ever played.
"I don't think we're going to see anybody like McEnroe or like Pete Sampras," said Collins. "It's going to be very difficult to develop those games."
Ironically, while the rackets might be turning the professional men's game into monotonous slugfests, they have led to a boom in the popularity of the women's game, as players like the Williams sisters and Jennifer Capriati have boosted the power and athleticism of the sport, with the help of high-tech rackets.
"If the power has killed the men's game, it's really helped the women's," said Jon Wertheim, senior tennis writer at Sports Illustrated. "The women are at just the right spot -- no one is just looping the ball back and forth like they used to. The only thing is, in 10 years, the women will get to the same point that the men are now."
Many in the game have been advocating that rackets be more tightly controlled. Earlier this year, several former top players -- including McEnroe, Boris Becker and Martina Navratilova -- sent a letter to the ITF encouraging the governing body to revisit the question of rackets.
In the letter, the players wrote that tennis has become "unbalanced and one-dimensional."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60177,00.html
The target of his legendary wrath isn't the chair umpire or a linesman who made a questionable call. Instead, McEnroe, along with several other prominent retired players, is challenging the game's international governing body, the International Tennis Federation, to do something to rein in the power provided by today's tennis rackets. As the U.S. Open gets underway this week, McEnroe wonders if rackets haven't become too big a factor in the game.
"I think that the sport has lost something," said McEnroe of the changes wrought by the current rackets. "It's lost some subtlety, some strategy, some of the nuance."
There are surprisingly few rules governing the size, shape and construction of a tennis racket. According to the rules published by the ITF, a racket can't be longer than 29 inches, and the hitting surface of the racket can't be larger than 15.5 inches long and 11.5 inches wide.
Additionally, rules prohibit any device that changes the racket's shape or weight distribution. And no power sources, such as batteries or solar cells, are allowed to be incorporated into the racket.
Obviously, those guidelines allow for a great deal of experimentation. Rackets today allow players to launch the ball at previously unthinkable speeds, approaching 150 mph. They're high-tech weapons made of graphite, Kevlar, titanium and exotic alloys. There's even a racket with a chip built into the handle that allows the racket to stiffen upon impact with the ball.
All of this technology has led to major changes in how the game is played at the top level. Today, almost every player is content to stay at the baseline and pound the ball in long rallies with the opponent, hitting crushing shots with a great deal of topspin. The aggressive serve-and-volley game has almost completely disappeared.
"It's very hard to volley against all this pace and topspin," said Bud Collins, the tennis writer for the Boston Globe and the dean of American tennis journalists. "It's an easier game to play from the baseline because you aren't taking chances. That's what I don't like: No one is taking chances. It's very difficult to serve and volley. You have so many people playing the same way now, and that's the problem."
This homogeny means that a match like the 1980 Wimbledon final, which matched the serve-and-volleyer McEnroe with the baseliner Björn Borg, might never take place again. That match is widely considered the greatest ever played.
"I don't think we're going to see anybody like McEnroe or like Pete Sampras," said Collins. "It's going to be very difficult to develop those games."
Ironically, while the rackets might be turning the professional men's game into monotonous slugfests, they have led to a boom in the popularity of the women's game, as players like the Williams sisters and Jennifer Capriati have boosted the power and athleticism of the sport, with the help of high-tech rackets.
"If the power has killed the men's game, it's really helped the women's," said Jon Wertheim, senior tennis writer at Sports Illustrated. "The women are at just the right spot -- no one is just looping the ball back and forth like they used to. The only thing is, in 10 years, the women will get to the same point that the men are now."
Many in the game have been advocating that rackets be more tightly controlled. Earlier this year, several former top players -- including McEnroe, Boris Becker and Martina Navratilova -- sent a letter to the ITF encouraging the governing body to revisit the question of rackets.
In the letter, the players wrote that tennis has become "unbalanced and one-dimensional."
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60177,00.html