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Comment by ndr | Hacker News Reader

> [...] experts say, is mostly a function of the increasing role of power and velocity in the sport. Even clay courts, historically the slowest surface, play hard and fast these days. Players, who spend more and more time in the gym, keep getting bigger and stronger, and now hit forehands at more than 100 miles per hour. Rackets and strings allow for so much topspin that rally balls from even average players are bouncing up to eye level, making it hard for even the 6-foot-7 Eubanks to get on top of the ball on some backhands. David Nainkin, who leads player development for men for the United States Tennis Association, has advice for any young talent he sees wielding a one-handed backhand — get rid of it. The two-handed backhand is far more stable, he said, and the motion is shorter and simpler. “It’s almost impossible to make it with a one-handed backhand now,” he said. “I think you’ll see less of it maybe in the next 10 years.”

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> experts say, is mostly a function of the increasing role of power and velocity in the sport. Even clay courts, historically the slowest surface, play hard and fast these days.

Yeah this line was the key for me. But I think it is the opposite. They don't play hard and fast, they play hard and slow. This is why, I think, we do not have a lot of serve and volley players nowadays or one-handed backhands, not like the 90s. Because the baseliner has enough time to return your serves.

I watched the Wimbledon final and although Alcaraz went to the nets, it did not feel it is his style like a McEnroe or a Sampras. It felt like it was a strategy against Djokovic. Barely managed to hold on though.

Anyways, I stopped watching tennis a while ago (except the wimbledon finals), there is too much power and bullying involved, not enough grace and beauty. It feels like, I dare say, when field hockey decided to use astroturf instead of grass. In one stroke, all the flair players that relied on the unpredictability of grass were out and "hard running" and "precision scientific passing" won the day. Field Hockey stadiums are now almost always half-full, the beauty is gone.

Football and Rugby, I hope they stay the same.

EDIT: One other thing I noticed is that, in the 90s and early 00s, you had clay court specialists, hard court specialist and grass court specialists. The 4 grand slams were called the Vivaldi 4 seasons, they were that different. Winning all 4 was exceedingly tough. I think, now they are all the same, hard and slow. The variablility and unpredicatability is gone. You win 1, you can win them all.

>Players, who spend more and more time in the gym, keep getting bigger and stronger, and now hit forehands at more than 100 miles per hour.

Sounds a little like baseball in the late 90s…

For those of us not into baseball, how did it evolve 30 years in?

There was a major drugs/doping scandal, several people went to jail, and somewhat more effective anti-doping measures were put in place.

So the parent comment was referencing the steroid era in the 90s like the sibling comment mentions but you also do still see that in the (presumably) cleaner game today. While upper 90s fastballs used to be rare, they're pretty common now. More and more pitchers are throwing pitches with more and more spin. Personally, I think the game is in a good place especially with the pace of play changes but many (most?) also believe that this arms race, so to speak, is really driving the prevalence of arm injuries. I'm a Rays fan, it's a sore subject this year.

While there is no clear evidence that gameplay was significantly changed due to Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs), the analytics revolution headlined by Moneyball has continued to change the game towards power. Both hitting (hitting fly balls far as the core strategy, accepting increased strikeouts which used to be "embarassing") and pitching ("pitch labs", where the average velocity has significantly increased with harder to hit pitches) were impacted.

Basically, the benefit of a homerun and the benefit of a strikeout were both better understood and so the balance of the game changed so those were more common outcomes.

> Players, who spend more and more time in the gym, keep getting bigger and stronger,

"The gym" read as "steroids".

I wish people would stop lying about this ...

> so much topspin that rally balls from even average players are bouncing up to eye level

Doesn’t topspin reduce bounce height, and backspin increase it?

> Doesn’t topspin reduce bounce height, and backspin increase it?

No, it's the opposite.

That doesn't match my experience in tennis, table tennis, pickleball, or soccer, so a quick online search confirmed:

tennis: https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/club/lessons/inen/bounce2...

pickleball: http://applecountrypickleball.blogspot.com/2015/12/spin.html

table tennis: https://www.allabouttabletennis.com/table-tennis-techniques-...

edit:

ok now I am very confused, as I can also find reports of the opposite effect, for example:

https://blog.tennisplaza.com/spin-effect-the-physics-behind-...

Can anyone explain why topspin makes a ball bounce lower (matching my experience and some online reports) and also higher (matching some reports in this thread and online)?

All else being equal, both can't be right. So is there some other variable at play, such as velocity, surface coefficient of friction, etc? Or is someone wrong?

> tennis: https://tennisone.tennisplayer.net/club/lessons/inen/bounce2...

Literally from that link: "A ball with topspin bounces higher than a ball with slice."

No, that link has that statement as a true/false quiz question, and gives the answer as false.

> No, that link has that statement as a true/false quiz question, and gives the answer as false.

Oh, well, that site seems pretty sketchy anyway. It wants to force download multiple files as soon as I load it.

FWIW here's Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topspin#Competitive_utility "On most court surfaces, topspin also makes the ball bounce higher. As a result, it is often used on clay or "soft" court surfaces which have a naturally higher bounce in order to make the ball harder for the opponent to hit. An opponent with a one-handed backhand is especially vulnerable to a topspin shot because it is difficult to hit a high ball with a one-handed backhand."

[EDIT:] Reading that sketchy site more closely, it appears to be a trick question:

> So, if you've been paying attention, you might say, "The question at the beginning of this article was a ruse?" Not exactly. In theory, it is possible to hit two balls, one with topspin and one with slice, that arrive with the same height. But in reality, that won’t happen. You have to hit a slice low over the net, otherwise it will fly long. On the other hand, you want to hit a topspin-ball high over the net; otherwise it will land short or in the net.

What makes all the difference in tennis is that topspin and backspin shots go over the net at entirely different angles. You're not just hitting a flat shot with spin.

it "bounces lower" in that a ball coming down will dive down faster and lower. But after it hits the ground, it will "bounce higher". The misunderstanding probably comes from using the word "bounce" without specifying whether the ball is bouncing up or down. This is the forward topspin of the ball working to move the ball harder in the direction it's going (I. e. faster down before bouncing, and faster up after bouncing)

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