The slice is a lost skill and grass will punish that

A generation raised on high-bouncing hard courts and stiff polyester strings has stopped learning the one shot that stays low.

Underspin makes the ball stay in the air longer and come off the court lower and slower. That combination does two things at once: it gives you time when you are in trouble, and it takes time away from an opponent whose whole game is built on hitting the ball at shoulder height with a full swing.

Which is why the backhand slice used to be a standard part of a professional's kit and is now, on the men's tour especially, a minority skill held by a handful of players who all seem to be over thirty.

The reason is straightforward and it is developmental. If you grow up on medium-paced hard courts with heavy topspin coming at you, the ball sits up in your strike zone, and the winning answer is to hit it back with more topspin. Slice is a worse option in that environment. It floats, it sits up for a strong opponent, and the coach tells you to stop doing it. Do that from eight to eighteen and you arrive on tour with a shot you can only hit defensively, off your back foot, high over the net.

Then you play on grass for three weeks a year and discover that a low ball is a completely different sport. Or you play somebody who chips the return and comes in and you have never in your life had to hit a passing shot off your shoelaces.

The counter-argument is that the modern game does not need it, and there is evidence for that in the fact that plenty of players win a great deal without one. Fine. But look at who wins on the fastest and slowest surfaces, and look at how often a match on an awkward court turns on somebody being able to change the height and pace of a rally rather than just its direction. Variation is not nostalgia. It is a way of making an opponent play at a tempo they never trained for.

There is a smaller version of this loss that bothers me more. The forehand slice approach, hit flat and skidding on a short ball, has essentially disappeared from the junior game.

Which means an entire cohort of players has no shot that lets them arrive at the net with the point already half won.