Some Top Shot Returners Answer Speed With Savvy

There is a reason those Internet videos of French Open finals past appear to be taking place in slow motion.

“Just go back and watch Yannick Noah play Mats Wilander in 1983,” said Roger Rasheed, the Australian tennis coach. “The ball is barely being hit.”

Difficult as it may be to believe in an era of grueling baseline duels, the entertainment value of tennis was once considered to be endangered by all this technology, all this pace, which was supposed to make the service king, the rallies too short, the sport too staccato.

Instead, the defenders have struck back and not simply because — as outraged net rushers complain — the court surfaces are slower and the balls are less lively. The defenders are also doing things differently: creating antidotes to the would-be poisons, buying back time with fresh ideas, even new shots.

Shots like the lunging forehand flick of a slice that Roger Federer has popularized and that has been called, for better or worse, the “squash shot.” Shots like Rafael Nadal’s shoulder-swiveling backhand slice, where he is already twisting to run in the other direction to play defense even though the ball is still on his strings. Shots like Novak Djokovic’s open-stance backhand that he can still hit with two hands with power from a near split.

Or shots like Agnieszka Radwanska’s crouching half-volley tight to the baseline that can leave scrapes or clay on her knee. It is a reflex ground stroke usually hit after an opponent has clubbed one of her weaker serves back at her in a big hurry.

“I pretty much just do the squat,” Radwanska said.

In that case, let’s call it a squat shot, but whatever one calls it, the rationale behind it is part of a bigger picture and bigger problem. In other times, Radwanska might have taken a step or two or three back off a deep return before making her stroke.

Now she squats and swings away.

“I’ve been doing it since I can remember, but now more and more,” said Radwanska, the No. 3 seed who lost in the third round to Svetlana Kuznetsova. “It is a reaction to the power. If we had more time, it would for sure be different.”

Radwanska’s squat shot has made some converts, including her younger sister and training partner, Urszula, who also uses it.

“People think it’s because we’re lazy, but we’re not,” Urszula Radwanska said.

Victoria Azarenka and Jelena Jankovic use a version of it, too. But some see the squat shot as more of a quirk than a breakthrough.

“That’s a tough thing to copy,” the veteran coach Nigel Sears said.

The Federer-style squash shot has become integral to the game on all surfaces, however. It is the 21st-century version of the forehand slice that was once a staple of the stars in the days of wooden rackets. It was particularly useful for approaching the net but was also used as a defensive tool.

“In the generation of Manolo Santana, Roy Emerson and Rod Laver, they were using the slice forehand a lot, but then this shot disappeared,” said Ricardo Sánchez, a Spaniard who has coached some of the top women’s players in this era.

Leading women use the squash shot, too. But the new rackets, polyester strings and tremendous athleticism of today’s men’s players have repurposed the slice forehand into something more than a last-ditch attempt to save a rally. Where players might have thrown up a desperation defensive lob in the past, they are now more inclined to chop down hard at the ball at full stretch, often with extreme grips, and produce a crisp slice.