Power Versus Touch

Players who use physical power effectively have reached great heights and ranking in professional tennis in the recent past. Professional tennis players, both in the men’s and women’s tournaments, have demonstrated how power is increasingly becoming a ‘must have’ to survive in this fiercely competitive sport. Yesteryear players like Rosco Tanner as well as current professionals like Andy Roddick have relied heavily on power tennis to win many a match.

All the power players have consistent service speeds of over 100 mph. Given the high speed of serves, the match featuring these power masters have very small rallies. Compared to the power tennis, there are other players who in spite of a lean body have reached greater heights in professional life by their sheer skill in touch tennis. These tennis artists have fantastic control over their placement of shots and often use the variation in speed of the shot to deceive the opponents and win the crucial points. They have effectively used the drop shot and the lobs to disorient the opposing player. Players in this genre that come to mind are Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander, and the current top players like Andy Murray and Roger Federer.

In the early 80s and 90s, given the easy pace of life in general and competitiveness in tennis tournaments, the skills and silky touch tennis played importance. However, with the invention of bigger graphite and metallic rackets, power has come to the fore. Players in the McEnroe era often used rackets which were smaller in size and made of wood. These wooden rackets could not produce much power in tennis and the maximum anyone could reach with their serves was in the range of 80 mph. Today, the graphite rackets with the better design and a bigger sweet-spot, can easily generate serve speeds in excess of 95 mph even for local community tennis players.

There are people who are fascinated with silken touch tennis and are often nostalgic of the legendary matches of the 80s between Borg, Connors and McEnroe. These were the matches that one could watch on a pleasant summer afternoon without getting worked up. There are also a set of people who get the kick of watching the serve-and-volley matches featuring Boris Becker and Stefan Edberg.

Tennis, whether it is power or touch, is an exciting game to watch and enjoy. The debate of which one is better will continue for long. This is one debate which will continue at many a coffee table discussion amongst the tennis enthusiasts across the globe. It will also be a favorite ice breaker for conversations at many lunch and dinner meetings.

Tennis has die-hard fanatics all across the world who can go on and on animatedly over the statistics of various matches and discussions on the hard courts of Australian Open or the clay courts of French Open in comparison to the grass courts of Wimbledon. A few, ironically might have never played the game, but are complete pros at analyzing the technicalities of it.