5 serve and volley players in modern day tennis

Dustin Brown

Brown spent most of the 2016 season participating on the Challenger circuit

Germany’s Dustin Brown is perhaps one of the last few ‘popular’ exponents of serve and volley in the game. One of the few players who is not particularly comfortable from the baseline, Brown is more an attacker than a defender.

But the tall German has had his biggest successes on grass, a surface that suits his fast serve-and-volley game. Between 2014 and 2015, Brown took two big victories over Rafael Nadal, both of them at Wimbledon, and his serve-and-volley technique was perhaps instrumental in doing so.

Taking his opponents away from the baseline – a useful tactic considering the sheer number of baseline players that have cropped up over the last decade, and how much the game has shifted since, Brown runs to the net for most of his points. In fact, against former No. 1 Rafael Nadal, Brown has won a minimum of 60% of his points in net approaches.

It is the speedy grass surface that suits Brown, and the slowing down of the grass at Wimbledon that may have led to Brown’s downfall; he now competes largely on the Challenger tour, and is now at 82^nd in the rankings after once having been a top 20 player.

But he is among the few serve-and-volley proponents in tennis today, and his aggressive, flashy tennis was a good watch when the now 32-year-old was at the top of his form.