Somewhere in the museum of obsolete athletic skills—home to the spitball, the skyhook, and the Statue of Liberty play—a special wing will have to be set aside for tennis. The chip shot and the lob may be there one day, alongside other sadly devalued inventions. There will be glass cases displaying wooden racquets with cow-gut strings, sepia-toned photographs of dapper men in long cotton pants, and, at the center of the exhibit, an interactive screen explaining why, exactly, anyone ever bothered coming to the net.

Few sports have evolved so dramatically in the past forty years, or been so utterly transformed by technology. Drop a young Pele onto a modern soccer field and he would still dribble circles around most players. A DiMaggio in his twenties could go on a hitting spree in the major leagues tomorrow. But even Rod Laver in his prime, when he twice won all four grand-slam tournaments in a calendar year, would be flummoxed by today’s game: the giant carbon-fibre racquets, the synthetic strings that send every shot spinning and dipping over the court, and Andy Roddick at the baseline, blasting serves at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. It would seem less like tennis and like target practice...