Staying on Base : Girls’ Tennis Players Are Playing It Safe

What began as a competitive set of singles was slowly evolving into nothing more than a light tapping session. As the set droned on and the points grew longer, strategy was reduced to simply getting the ball back over the net, movement between the players ceased and spectators nodded off.

Suddenly the thought of going home and watching C-SPAN for 10 hours sounded a lot more exciting than watching a tennis match between two of the top girls’ teams in the county. When the set mercifully ended--90 minutes after it began--one disgusted coach appeared ready to charge the net himself.

“That just set the sport of tennis back 50 years,” he muttered. “That’s going to force me into retirement. Whatever happened to coming in, being aggressive, closing off the net and putting the ball away?”

Did something happen or have girls’ tennis players always avoided the net as though it were afflicted with a contagious disease?

“I don’t know if I would say this type of play is a trend,” said Sam Olson, a pro at Balboa Bay Racquet Club who gives private lessons and clinics to many of the top junior girls’ players in the county. “It’s been that way for years and years. Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King played well at the net, but there haven’t been that many other women who’ve been successful with that style.”

Or many who have even attempted to play that style. If baseliners are suddenly taking over women’s tennis, it’s news to Corona del Mar Coach Tim Mang.

“The girls have always been in the backcourt,” Mang said. “I can’t remember one player from around here who has ever been a serve and volleyer, or even a really good net player. No, I can’t think of anybody.”

But that doesn’t mean high school coaches, private club coaches and parents haven’t tried to bring girls into the net.

“We don’t really have time to work on strokes, but we can work on strategy,” Dana Hills Coach John Stephens said. “One of the main things we work on in practice every day is closing. It’s a fight to get them to do it because it’s not natural.”

What seems natural to girls is the baseline game. Some play it better than others simply because they can hit the ball harder and place it better, but almost all of them play it. Most girls spend so much time mastering the baseline, they don’t have time to develop a net game, and most don’t think it’s necessary.

“I was taught that ground strokes are the most important part of the tennis game,” said Villa Park senior Katey Becker, a top-10 singles player in Southern California last year. “If you learn how to play only a serve-and-volley game, you have nothing else to rely on. I learned how to win from the baseline. A lot of girls have such good passing shots. If you’re at the net, you’ll probably get passed.”

Corona del Mar senior Nina Vaughan hits crisp volleys, solid overhead smashes and deep approach shots in practice, but in matches, especially close ones, she usually sticks with what she knows--zinging backhand or forehand winners from behind the baseline.

“The girls that are really tough at the net have been playing that way for a long time,” said Vaughan, a Southern Section individual singles semifinalist the last two years.

“You’re not going to risk losing a tournament so you can play well at the net. Most women hit hard and flat, and if you’re at the net, you don’t really have a lot of time to react.”

Vaughan and Becker met in the Southern California Sectional finals of the girls’ 16 division last year. Vaughan won a tight three-set match that was played almost entirely from the baseline. Both players will receive college scholarships this fall and neither apologizes for the way she plays.

Vaughan was the third-ranked 16-year-old in Southern California last year and her play this summer earned her a scholarship to Notre Dame. She orally committed last week. Becker is being recruited by San Diego State, Washington and Missouri.

“I don’t think there’s any right way or wrong way to play,” Becker said. “A lot more of the women players are more consistent from the baseline than the guys and have longer rallies.”

Olson, who coached Northridge’s Meilen Tu, an elite junior player now on the pro tour, said Vaughan and Becker followed the path that most girls ultimately take.

“To make that transition from being a conservative player to an aggressive player is very hard to do,” he said. “For some, it’s almost impossible. It’s definitely a lot easier to win off of the other player’s errors and it’s the easiest way to get up to a very high ranking. But to play at a real high level, you have to play a more aggressive game.

“It’s very hard to beat a person by going out and playing aggressively. To be able to do that, you really have to be working hard on your tennis game. Most parents and kids want to play an aggressive game. They play it for a while, it doesn’t work and they go back to what they’re comfortable with.”

The path that most follow along the baseline has often led to college scholarships for many of the county’s top players, but rarely much further. Keri Phebus, Anne Mall, Danielle Scott and Debbie Graham, probably the top four county junior girls’ players of the last 10 years--all essentially baseliners--had successful college careers, but none have made an impact on the professional tour.

“At the very top level, you have to have something to hurt the other player,” Olson said.

But at the beginning levels, that is not usually necessary.

“A lot of kids get a lot of good results with their groundstrokes,” said Mike Nelson, director of tennis at Ridgeline Racquet Club. “They think, ‘If I continue to do this, I get to go to school on a tennis scholarship.’ They don’t want to lose their rankings and by the time rankings don’t matter as much, it’s too late to change.”

It seems high school tennis matches would provide the ideal setting for raising one’s comfort level at the net. No junior rankings are at stake, and top teams often play vastly inferior opponents, so winning is a foregone conclusion. The best singles players often win their sets 6-0 or 6-1. So why not experiment a little even if it means winning only 6-3?

“It’s hard because I have a lot of pride,” Vaughan said. “People say, ‘She’s gotten a full ride to Notre Dame and she’s only beating this girl, 6-4.’ But if I’m ever going to get good at playing the net, then I’m going to have to suck it up and try some different things.”

Familiarity is one reason girls usually return to the baseline. Nelson says another is racket technology. Nelson said bigger and lighter rackets have changed the way most girls approach the game.

“The girls can hit the ball so hard these days,” Nelson said. “To come to the net takes a better reaction time than it did with the old wooden rackets.”

Mang said most girls are accustomed to having plenty of time to prepare for a shot.

“The two-handed backhand is one of the most widely-used shots going in the girls’ game,” Mang said. “These little girls were taught to prepare early and it’s very hard at the net where you have almost no preparation time.”

It’s also hard to be effective at the net if you can’t get there in a hurry or move well once you’re there.

“You have to be a great athlete to be able to play up there,” Arizona State women’s Coach Sheila McInerney said. “Martina Hingis is able to play up there, but she’s a great athlete. There just aren’t that many great women athletes who play tennis. That’s why somebody like Venus Williams stands out.”

But most girls aren’t nearly as athletic as Hingis or as tall as Williams, who’s 6 feet 2.

“And just because you’re tall or fast doesn’t mean you’ll be great at the net,” McInerney said. “It’s such an instinctive thing. A lot of times you don’t know where you have to cover, you just get there. Unless you’ve been doing it since you were 14, you usually don’t have the knack for being in the right place.”

So if excelling at the net game is so difficult for women, why should they bother?

“If you’re really going to be a tennis player, you have to learn how to play inside the court,” said Australian coach Phil Dent, who along with most of his countrymen grew up learning a serve-and-volley game. “A lot of kids are trying to win matches instead of learning how to play.”

Olson, who teaches with Dent at the Balboa Bay Club, agrees.

“There’s no real strategy to beating someone who plays an aggressive game well,” he said. “If you take the ball out of the air early, start hitting angles and deep approach shots, then volley at the net, you’re controlling the point and you’re unstoppable. It really is the right way to play, but very few can master it.”

But it is hard to play the right way without getting started in the right direction, Becker said.

“Most serve and volleyers have a serve that starts dictating the point immediately, but most women don’t have the power in their serve to do that,” Becker said.

Dent doesn’t think everyone has to be a serve and volleyer like U.S. Open champion Patrick Rafter or the world’s No. 1-ranked player, Pete Sampras, but he does believe in an attacking style of play. Dent is working on that approach with 13-year-old Woodbridge High freshman Susanna Lingman.

“You have to have a feel for it,” Dent said. “You have to know where to cover, how to react. You don’t get that feel from standing three to 10 feet from behind the baseline.”

Belle Lingman, Susanna’s mother, said many tennis parents simply don’t have the patience to let their son or daughter learn to play an aggressive, high-risk game. But Belle Lingman said she and her husband decided they would allow Dent to teach Susanna and their son, David, a serve-and-volley type game.

“I think my kids believe in that style because they’ve always been with the Aussies and the Aussies believe that game can win,” Belle Lingman said.

“The biggest part of this is that the parents are willing to let their child experiment. You have to let the kid play the way they want to play. The parents have to allow the kids to fail. We don’t emphasize rankings. Who’s going to remember the junior rankings anyway? It’s a side note if anything. But if you’re going to develop your game and look to the long-term goal . . . I know we are looking at the long term.”

But the long term can seem a long way off for the 14-year-old who just got routed by a player whose only strategy was keeping the ball in play.

“You’ll hit two winners a game, but you’ll make four errors a game by playing more aggressively than your opponent, at least in the beginning,” Olson said. “So in the end, it’s probably a loss.”

But Stephens has tried to tell his players that the risk is worth the reward.

“‘Not knowing how to close and how to shorten the point is a weakness,” Stephens said. “Most don’t do it well, but the good players do do it well. I think a lot of players don’t realize their potential because they haven’t focused on it.”

Stephens believes a player who plays conservatively will end up beating herself.

“A lot of opportunities are lost by not taking advantage of opponents’ short balls,” he said. “Players are losing to players they should beat and matches are longer than they should be.”

Even true baseliners such as Vaughan and Becker agree they will need to improve their net game if they are going to be successful at the next level.

“I’ve been working on my volleys a lot in practice and playing more doubles has improved my volleying,” Vaughan said. “But I still need work on my transition game. I don’t think I’ll ever be a serve and volleyer but I do see myself closing off points better.”

Becker said occasionally she has junked her baseline style for a serve-and-volley style during high school matches, but the results haven’t been encouraging.

“Let’s just say I need to work on it some more,” she said.

But many club pros think the work is being done on the lower levels.

“More and more of the younger girls are coming up to net,” Dent said. “That’s probably the next big thing in women’s tennis.”

But until the net revolution begins with the next wave of junior girls, banging away from the baseline will likely continue to be a winning style.

“Success breeds success,” McInerney said. “Not many people like the four-corners offense in basketball because they thought it was boring. But Dean Smith won a lot of games with that style. So it’s hard to knock baseline tennis too much.”