“It’s bizarre to me,” Macpherson said. “Innovation, I think, is good. We see it all the time in my football that I love in Australia. They’re always tweaking the rules to try and make it more attractive and fair. So, I don’t know why we’re so stodgy in tennis where we don’t look at things. We don’t have an independent panel that looks at the rules each year and says, “How can we make the game more attractive, singles and doubles?”
Occasionally there are flare-ups centered on the central role the serve plays in tennis. Remember, Wimbledon tore up its hallowed courts and re-seeded them with a special perennial ryegrass when serving duels featuring the likes of Pete Sampras, Goran Ivanisevic, and others threatened to turn tennis into a two-shot game.
Tournaments have tried to compensate for the pre-emptive power of the servebot (a player who relies overly on his serve to win points) by slowing the court, or using balls that fluff up and thus travel more slowly through the air – a strategy that has been linked with increased arm injuries.
Some critics have attacked the very heart of the serving protocol. Veteran coach and exhibition tennis promoter Patrick Mouratoglou told the Greek City Times recently that he favored limiting players to one serve only per point, saying: “The high number of aces and serve winners is detrimental to tennis. We want more rallies and less of these quick points—boom, serve, winner, ace, missed return. An occasional ace is fine, but not too many.”
