In “Levels of the Game,” his acclaimed book about the 1968 U.S. Open semifinal between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner, John McPhee described what tennis experts of his day saw as a growing problem for men’s tennis: serves were increasing in speed, service breaks were scarce, and the serve-and-volley style of play was rapidly decreasing the length of points. Players of the “Big Game,” McPhee noted, rested more than they swung their rackets.

“Reformers who remember the Old Game and think something should be done about this one have suggested eliminating the first serve or making the server serve from several feet behind the baseline,” McPhee wrote. “Possibly the best suggestion is that the serve be left intact – for the sheer spectacle of it – but that the server not play his next shot without first letting the ball bounce. This would tend to keep the server back near the baseline and remove the homicide from his following shot.”

A quarter-century later, it turns out that no rule change was needed to address these concerns. In modern men’s tennis, service returns are routinely played on a bounce, though the postserve “homicide” and service breaks have, if anything, become bloodier. The unexpected twist, however, is that as serves are being struck with more force and spin, returners have adapted.

Despite the brute force of the serve, which now routinely surpasses 120 mph and recently reached 150 mph, returners are taking healthy swipes at the ball, leaving net rushers with little time and little margin for error. In today’s game, it’s more difficult to play the “Big Game” of serve-and-volley tennis than ever before.

“Guys these days return very well, you know, especially on the second shot, the passing shot,” said Roger Federer, the world’s best player and two-time Wimbledon champion, when asked over the weekend about the state of the serve-and-volley game. “So you have to stick your volleys. It’s not enough to just place them.”

Andy Roddick, the fastest server on the tour, noted earlier this year that the men’s game has changed in a way that wasn’t predicted by those who feared the big serve.

“I think [things] kind of took a left turn from what people were saying five years ago with Pete [Sampras],” Roddick said. “I think people are getting quicker, more consistent. Andre [Agassi] really revolutionized the game by taking full cuts at returns. Now a lot of guys are doing that. It’s become a big neutralizer.”

Statistics provided by the Association of Tennis Professionals dating back to 1991, when the tour first began keeping such data, help to tell the story. After reaching a peak in the 1996 season, aces have declined and leveled off. Back then, the tour’s top 10 servers struck an astonishing 12.2 aces a match. Last year, the final ace tally among the top 10 reached an average of 10.5.

The best servers are not winning quite as many first-serve points, either. Among the top 10 in this category, the average percentage of first serves won dipped from 81.1% in 1996 to 77.7% in 2002,before climbing to 78.8% last year.

At the same time, percentages for returners have improved. 2003 was a record year for winning points against an opponent’s first serve. The top 10 players in that category had an average success rate of 40.5%, the highest average in the history of the ATP’s statistics. Federer, one of the category’s best performers, won 40% of his points against first serves in 2003.

Simply put, as first serve points become more difficult to win and returners pressure their opponents more off first serves, serve-and-volley tennis presents even larger risks and becomes difficult to sustain point after point. As McPhee might say, coming in behind a serve in today’s game can be murder.

“The name of the game in men’s tennis is to hold serve,” said Taylor Dent, one of only a handful of players who has chosen the serve-and-volley way of life. “If you’re a baseliner, you know, you don’t really need to have a great serve. You can just kick it in, stay out of trouble, you know, work your way into the baseline points. I think [serve-and-volley] is a more precise art.You really need to be hitting the spots and being solid up at the net for it to be successful. It’s tough to do.”

Besides improvements by returners, other factors have contributed to the difficulty of playing serve-and-volley tennis. More indoor hard-court tournaments on the tour use courts with slower surfaces, further reducing the speed of a serve’s bounce. At Wimbledon, players say the lawns offer more consistent bounces than they once did, and baseliners have repeatedly succeeded there. Federer won his first Wimbledon playing a lot of serve and volley, but he largely abandoned it this year until he needed a surprise, after a rain delay, to beat back Roddick in the final.

All this is not to say that the serve-and-volley game has been left for dead. Certainly, there are fewer players who have the confidence to live and die by it, and that trend may well continue. But it remains a great tactical weapon at a time when variety seems to be growing in importance among top players.

Federer, for one, says he would like to play more of it, and Roddick has dabbled in it as well. Agassi still surprises his opponents with it from time to time, as he did with great success in Cincinnati this summer. Walking around the grounds of the U.S. Open this weekend, one might have stumbled upon Xavier Malisse, a baseliner from Belgium, practicing serve and volley. Perhaps he noticed the great results that Martin Verkerk and Tim Henman had the past two years attacking the net on clay at the French Open, long the home of grinders and retrievers.

As Dent explains it, today’s serve-and-volley players are likely to lose a few more close points that, in the days of softer returns, might have gone their way. Still, the artistry of the style, and the knowledge of how well it can work when it’s done right, can be irresistible.

“I feel like serve-and-volley tennis is such a dominating game, if you are playing it how it should be played, then it doesn’t matter too much,” Dent said. “But it’s tough to execute.”