Serve-and-volley is a playstyle that tennis players have used for decades, but its future looks bleak in 2026. Today, there are very few players who adopt the playstyle, and most of them focus on baseline play. This has become a concern for former ATP pro Maxime Cressy. He raised questions about the playstyle’s near extinction in today’s tennis and reminisced about his match with Rafael Nadal, which made him fall in love with tennis and his style.

“Two completely opposite styles. Two completely different ways of seeing the same game. And that was the beauty of tennis,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “Today, I sometimes feel sad watching that variety slowly disappear. Slower and increasingly homogenized conditions have made serve-and-volley, the style that gave me my dream at 14, almost disappear at the highest level. And I keep thinking about that 14-year-old version of myself.”

At that age, Cressy was a part of the French youth development system and trained at CREPS PACA – Saint Raphaël-Boulouris, one of the nation’s biggest training hubs.

“What happens to the next kid like him? The kid whose heart tells him to attack. The kid who wants to rush the net when everyone tells him not to. Does he still get to dream?” he added.

Cressy believes that players shouldn’t keep on following the same playstyle and should play with distinct style, which would make watching the sport more interesting.

“Tennis should never be about creating the same player over and over again. It should be a place where completely different personalities, ideas and styles can meet on the same court. Maybe that’s why this picture means more to me today than it did then. It isn’t just a memory of playing Rafa. To me, it’s a memory of the tennis I fell in love with,” he further wrote.

The match Cressy refers to was the final of the ATP 250 event held in Melbourne in 2022. Nadal won 7-6 (6), 6-3, but he probably didn’t realize how important the match was to Cressy, who pretty much rediscovered his love for tennis through it. A natural serve-and-volleyer like him is hard to find these days, as the game has evolved past that playstyle.

The style had been perfected by players like John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer, and more. It was especially effective on grass courts, and the Wimbledon title was won mostly by natural serve-and-volleyers at one stage.

But the story today is very different, as baseline grinders are the ones dominating at the SW19 as well. There are a variety of reasons why serve-and-volleying has declined over the years. Multiple tennis players have shared their takes on the matter, and some have even blamed the new kind of tennis equipment for it.

Why is there a lack of serve-and-volleyers in today’s tennis?

Former World No. 4 Tim Henman had stated long ago that players are afraid of coming close to the net on every point because of the nature of the surfaces and balls.

“It’s really sad that the art of serve and volley is vanishing,” he had told PTI in 2016. “The game has changed. The surfaces are slow and the balls are heavier. The players are not playing that game.”

More recently, former ATP pro Rajeev Ram made a blunt assessment about the fading nature of serve-and-volleying. He remarked that there are very few courts remaining in the court where the playstyle is helpful.

“It’s completely fading,” he said. “The technology, the strings, the rackets, the courts, the balls, nothing is conducive to that style of tennis. Basically, it feels there’s no court, or very few courts and conditions in the world, that are conducive of that style.”

With the serve-and-volleyers slowly fading in tennis, it won’t be wrong to say that the sport may have become less interesting than before. With a clear majority of players using the same style of play, it is unlikely that serve-and-volleying will rise to prominence again in the coming future.