Can Carlos Alcaraz Bring Daring Tennis Back to Wimbledon?

A couple of weeks ago, Daniil Medvedev, just now the No. 1 men’s player in the world, got thrashed by a player I’d never heard of. It was the final of an event being held in the small Dutch city of ’s Hertogenbosch, an annual grass-court warmup for the Championships at Wimbledon, which begin on Monday. Tournament officials had done what tournament officials will do, and extended a wild-card invitation to a local Dutch player who would otherwise have had no chance of qualifying. Tim van Rijthoven, from nearby Amstelveen, was twenty-five years old, ranked No. 205 in the world, and had never won a main-draw match on the men’s tour. What became clear soon enough, though, was that van Rijthoven could play on the courts of ’s Hertogenbosch—he could play on grass, that is, the speediest and least reliable of tennis-court surfaces. Or, anyway, he could play a grass-court game that you don’t see all that much anymore.

Closely trimmed grass impels shorter points, or once did. It’s slippery, and difficult to run and rally on. Serves don’t seem to decelerate on contact with it, leading to more aces and service winners than you get on clay. Slices skid. Ground strokes produce bounces that are lower, or more erratic, or both. This is why serve-and-volley tennis was the rule at Wimbledon for decades. Grass bids players to take risks, to attack, to get a point done in as few shots as possible. And attack is what van Rijthoven did. He stepped inside the baseline to strike his ground strokes headlong toward the lines, pushed forward at the first hint of an opening, and worked to finish points quickly, often at the net. Technically and tactically, van Rijthoven played the all-court, swift-footed, aggressive style of game that, twenty years ago, brought the age of serve-and-volley tennis to an end. Van Rijthoven overwhelmed and befuddled Medvedev, by turns, winning 6–4, 6–1. And van Rijthoven has no reason to awaken from his dream just yet: his stunning run on the grass in the Netherlands earned him a wild-card entry to Wimbledon’s main draw.

This summer, Wimbledon is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its hallowed Centre Court. Much ado will be made of it, including—in case you needed a reminder that it’s 2022—the drop of commemorative N.F.T.s. Even so, this Wimbledon is likely to be recalled with an asterisk. Reportedly under pressure from the British government, tournament officials have banned Russian players such as Medvedev—and Belarusians, too—on account of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Unhappy with this, the A.T.P. and W.T.A., the organizations that run the men’s and women’s tours, respectively, declared that if Russians and Belarusians couldn’t play, and thus earn ranking points, then no one else could earn ranking points, either. In other words, no one’s worldwide ranking will be affected one way or another by what happens at Wimbledon. And yet the annual excitement about the Championships at Wimbledon remains, and the anniversary celebration will put a gloss on an event that, in truth, needs no further burnishing. Wimbledon is a bucket-list destination for those who can afford it. (The other day, the least expensive Centre Court ticket still available for Monday’s first-round action cost eighteen hundred and eighty-two dollars.) There are now retractable roofs atop Centre Court and the other large show court, Court No. 1—rain makes grass unplayable for longer stretches than clay or hard courts—which helps the tournament stick to its TV schedule, appointment viewing for sports fans around the world. Otherwise, Wimbledon has flourished by choosing to remain Wimbledon: easefully intimate and steeped in tradition.

Wimbledon did, however, make a subtle change two decades ago that both set the stage for the all-court, attacking style and, ultimately, brought it to a seeming end. In 2002, tournament officials approved a switch from a mix of ryegrass and creeping red fescue to pure ryegrass. The altered surface provided higher, less irregular bounces; the courts now play a little slower. In the years leading up to the change, big players wielding powerful carbon-fibre racquets strung with high-tech strings had turned serve-and-volley into serve and serve and serve some more, piling up unreturnable aces and barely touched service winners at mind-numbing rates. These were the years of Goran Ivanišević and Richard Krajicek, among others.

Like the grass, though, the players were changing, too. Those coming up were better conditioned, first-step quicker. So it came to pass at Wimbledon, in the summer of 2001, that nineteen-year-old Roger Federer arrived on Centre Court. Like his predecessors, he had a fine serve, and could get to the net and stick his volleys. But he also had an uncanny array of other shots, the most exceptional being a forehand that he could take early and pass a net-rusher with or rope inside out from the backhand corner—a place he could get to, as he got to most everywhere on the court, with winged, balletic strides. His opponent in the fourth round was Pete Sampras, his idol, a serve-and-volley virtuoso and holder of seven Wimbledon singles titles. Federer beat him in a five-set thriller. Grass-court tennis had reached an inflection point: pure serve-and-volley was more or less done. (There is exactly one persistent serve-and-volley player in the men’s Top Hundred this summer, the six-foot-six French American Maxime Cressy.) The following year, Lleyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian, players with little interest in approaching the net, reached the men’s final, which Hewitt won. Federer then won the next five.

But the reign of all-court attacking tennis on Centre Court did not last the decades that serve-and-volley did. If the grass was less grassy, and you could sprint, defend, and counterpunch, why not stay back behind the baseline and play it a little safer? By 2008, Federer himself was coming to the net a bit less than he had in his first runs to Wimbledon titles. That year, he was defeated in the final by Rafael Nadal, who seldom left the baseline in that match unless he was forced to. Nadal played what was essentially a clay-court game, using his speed to track down shots that would have been winners against lesser players, defending dazzlingly until he created an opening to hit big. All-court, high-risk tennis is not extinct: Italy’s Matteo Berrettini attacked his way to the Wimbledon final last year, where he lost to Novak Djokovic, and Nick Kyrgios, who is still at it (when he feels like it), may be the most swashbuckling all-court wonder never to have won a title on a lawn. But the two betting favorites to win this year’s men’s championship are Djokovic, who has won the past three, and Nadal, who, in 2022, has already won the Australian Open and the French Open, and begins the Wimbledon fortnight, as Djokovic did last year, with a shot at an in-year Grand Slam. Djokovic has dominated Wimbledon for the past ten years, winning six times, not with an aggressive go-for-it style but with his remarkable baseline game, built for true-bounce, not-too-fast hard courts. Watch matches on Centre Court during its second week and the grass is mostly worn down to the soil several feet behind both ends of the courts.

Was the reign of defense-based, baseline tennis at Wimbledon an inevitability, given the changes to the surface, the racquets, and the conditioning of the players? Was it produced by the happenstance clustering of greatness that was Nadal, Djokovic, and their contemporary Andy Murray, the arch-defender and two-time Wimbledon winner? Or has there simply been no next-gen Roger Federer?

This year, we may finally get an answer to that question. Not from Tim van Rijthoven—though I will be keeping an eye out for him—but from an even younger attacking-style player, one who has already managed to defeat both Djokovic and Nadal this season, albeit on clay: the nineteen-year-old Spanish phenom Carlos Alcaraz. Alcaraz got no further than the second round last year at Wimbledon, but he’s rocketed up the rankings and into the Top Ten this year, winning four titles, including the prestigious Miami Open. He is clearly the most gifted teen-ager to emerge in the men’s game since Nadal and Djokovic caught the tennis world’s attention in the early two-thousands. He has a first serve that can top a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour, a punishing forehand, unflagging speed, and the nerve to attack, again and again. At the U.S. Open last summer, he said that he tries “to be aggressive all the time.” He also said, “If I have to say one player that is similar to my game, I think it’s Federer.”

Federer will not be playing this year; he’s recovering from knee surgery, and it’s been slow going. (He has not ruled out returning next year.) Federer considers himself, first and foremost, a grass-court player. He loves the surface, and believes that, on grass, as he put it last year, “all my strengths get amplified.” Could the surface amplify Alcaraz’s strengths as well? And wouldn’t a new young Wimbledon champion make just the right anniversary gift for Centre Court? ♦