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Today's players finish their points from way back
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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Mildly Interesting
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Aren't basically all athletes hugely better than previous generations as well though? Advances in things like nutritional and sport sciences mean it can't just be the racket tech, surely?
Not hugely better, no. Marginally better, yes.
The racquet technology impact in tennis has been enormous, with the largest difference being size and weight. Traditional wood tennis racquets maxed out at around 65 sq in of string area but weighed up to 400 grams (mixed units, I know). A modern graphite tennis racquet can achieve 100 sq in of string area while decreasing the weight to 300 grams!
Lighter weights allow a player to generate a lot more racquet acceleration without killing their wrist. At the same time, the larger string area gives a lot more margin for error when striking the ball. Players in turn responded by changing their swing planes to a higher vertical angle, coming up over the back of the ball to generate a lot of topspin (and string technology helps with this too). The topspin further increases margin for error by making the ball dive down into the court instead of sailing long (see Magnus effect).
All of this has combined to allow tennis players to hit the ball far harder than they had in the past, with the increase far exceeding what you’d expect from physical training alone. Give modern players a traditional wood racquet and they’ll spray the ball all over the place, making huge numbers of errors, until they force themselves to not swing so hard.
Oh to be clear, the "hugely better" aspect I was referring to is the one observable across basically all sports at the top level (not specifically just tennis), particularly the last 40-50 years or so. One easy to observe side effect is how most world records have been set in the past couple of decades, I think the oldest standing one is from the mid-80s.
Though thanks for the extra context around the racquet, it does seem like it's likely the main factor.
Yes, like the racquet technology isn’t going to help Joe Sixpack weekend warrior. It takes all that training to be able to fully utilize the technology. The racquet size increase has led to so much more consistency with striking the ball that rallies last way longer now. Longer rallies require way more conditioning to survive!
Afaik this was true a few decades ago too
yeah it's probably both, and also could be cultural like strategy and technique evolving
And many people who are elite athletes today have been training hard in their sport since they were young children
Ya there are several things that go into this change. Shoes tech, grass type, how short was the grass cut, style of play has changed. If day racket tech is the biggest factor but it's imagine there's more that goes into it.