against great serve-and-volleyers such as John McEnroe, Pat Rafter or Pete Sampras. Since Tilden's time, head-to-head results on various surfaces, such as those played out in the famous rivalry between Borg and McEnroe, contradict his theory that great baseline players will tend to defeat great serve-and-volley ones. Another perspective on the serve-and-volley game is that it is less tiring than playing constantly from the backcourt. Kramer says in his autobiography that he and Pancho Segura once tried playing three matches in which they allowed the ball to bounce three times before either could approach the net. "I don't believe I could have played tennis the way Segoo and I did for the three nights because it wore me out, running down all those groundstrokes. It was much more gruelling than putting a lot into a serve and following it in." He went to say that "Rosewall was a backcourt player when he came into the pros, but he learned very quickly how to play the net. Eventually, for that matter, he became a master of it, as much out of physical preservation as for any other reason. I guarantee you that Kenny wouldn't have lasted into his forties as a world-class player if he hadn't learned to serve and volley." Despite the improvements in racquet technology made towards the end of the twentieth century which made serve-and-volley a rarer tool in a tennis player's skill set, players familiar with the strategy still advocate it. Roger Federer advocated up-and-coming players not to ignore the tactic's strategy of coming to the net, especially on faster surfaces and as a surprise tactic. Yet other players, such as Mischa Zverev, acknowledged the difficulty of mastering serve-and-volley, recalling his 36-month effort to adopt the style. He said: "Every point, you have to be ready. You're either going to get passed, you're going to miss an easy volley or you're going to win the point," and likened it to the stochastic nature of flipping a coin. References Tennis terminology Tennis strategy