by Pete Bodo
Devin Britton is a lanky 18-year-old from the sultry precincts of Brandon, Miss., a state in the deep south best known to sports fans as the ancestral home of the frères Manning, Peyton and Eli. For fans who prefer their violence imagined rather than observed, Mississippi is also the birthplace of the Nobel-Prize winning author William Faulkner. The state flower is the fragrant Magnolia, and the official state fish (who knew there was such a thing?) is the largemouth bass, a pugnacious rascal that eats anything that doesn't eat it first.
Southerners can be a fiercely proud, stubborn lot, imperturbable and not easily discouraged or cowed by the conventional wisdom, especially of the kind that emanates from more cosmopolitan precincts, like pretty much anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. I'm not sure this explains why Britton, the best young tennis player to come out of Mississippi in many years, insists on pursing the allegedly passé serve-and-volley game, but he does, and with a degree of fearless resolve that might impress anyone with a trucker's tan and a bumper sticker that reads, Git 'Er Done!
In May, Britton - a freshman at Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi) - became the youngest-ever NCAA singles champion, and he's played well enough since then to be the object of intense interest in the shark tank of pro tennis. So I decided to go out and see for myself, trusting that the big guns of the pro game would easily blow apart their challengers on the day when Wimbledon offered up a menu that might persuade the most gluttonous of tennis gourmand to belch and push back from the table.
Britton was on Court 19, a show court only in the sense that a fan studying his program might be moved to ask, "Can you show me where Court 19 is?" But don't be deceived. You many never see a Roger Federer or Serena Williams on that piece of lawn, but it's a real gem - strikingly situated between Court 18 (a proper show court) and Court 1, which is a boring stadium like any other, if you ask me. Court 19 is notched into the foot of Henman Hill, and Court 18 rises parallel with it, across a walkway, the nearly vertical stands looking very much like a cliff painted up by a pointillist graffiti artist.
Britton was playing the No. 7 seed, Japan's Shuichi Sekiguchi (there's a triple word score for you in ATP Scrabble), on a hot, humid day that might have reminded Britton of home. When Britton, already leading 4-1, served three aces in the next game, his opponent amiably cracked a big smile and shook his head, absorbing the cruel blow with admirable composure. Although a bout of anxiety by Britton allowed Sekiguchi to close the score to 4-5, Britton pulled himself together, served out the set, and then gave his opponent nothing in set two.
Watching Britton bring the heat and spear the volley, a fan could be forgiven for wondering: Who does this kind think he is, Rod Laver? Roy Emerson? Stefan Edberg? Pete Sampras? Well, let's not get carried away. If anything, Britton is reminiscent of the Canadian journeyman Philip Bester, in that Bester also had an attack gene that once looked like it might carry him to the top of the game as the next Pat Rafter. Bester has struggled, though, and for complicated reasons not solely related to tennis. Britton is presently at the point Bester was at the peak of his junior career, and the going has been as smooth as his service action.
Britton started playing at tennis age five, tagging along to the country club to watch his mother Cindy do battle in league play. A pro invited him to hit a bit, and Britton took to it. Soon, he was training with some other prospects from the Jackson area, but by the time he was 13 it became obvious that he needed to leave home to develop his game. He was also a good at baseball, but reluctantly gave it up to focus on tennis. "I liked pitching," Britton told me after the match. "I was one of the better ones in my youth baseball days, so that was the toughest sport to quit. On the other hand, I couldn't hit very well at all, so maybe that wasn't such a bad move."
At age 14, having run out of competition in his home state, Britton moved on to the IMG Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, where he spent three-and-a-half years. Although Bollettieri, via his protégés, has been one of the leading exponents of the baseline game, Britton says that Bollettieri and his staff recognized a natural style when they saw one, and never tried to discourage him from attacking. At Bollettieri's, Britton also said farewell for good to most of his other youthful interests. He enjoys fishing (being a son of the largemouth bass state and all) but he hasn't even done much of that lately ("Just once in a while, with a couple of other guys from Nick's"). That's okay, Devin, Rod Laver don't fish either.
Britton has a silky service action, and he tosses the ball far enough forward to bring his long frame well into the court with his follow-through; the bio-mechanics are ideal for moving to the net and Britton exploits that fully. His volleys are superb - I don' t believe I've seen a player with such superb touch and placement at a comparable stage in his career since the young Edberg, or Pat Cash. Today, Britton hit numerous drop volleys and acutely angled touch volleys, stretching the court with wisdom beyond his years. And at one point, he took a volley on the backhand side, while approaching, and cut both under and inside the ball in such a way that thing bounced, stopped in mid-air, made a right turn, changed its mind and went back the other way.
Bubba, if he was watching, might have drawled: That didn't work out so bad. . .
It takes a healthy imagination to come up with a shot like that; perhaps that's the Faulkner influence becoming manifest. But slashing your way to the upper echelon of the game - heck, getting up into the Top 100 - is easier said than done. Even in the heyday of serve-and-volley tennis, the style required an acute degree of precision and intensity, coupled with the physical ability to withstand the stresses and strains of all that lunging, stopping and starting. It takes time to develop that game to its finest, requisite degree (see: Pat Rafter). And doing it can burn you out (see: Pat Rafter).
It isn't as if Britton has no inkling of this. Contemplating the challenge, he said, "You can't serve and volley (in today's game), yeah, a bunch of people are saying that. I guess it is what it is. I can't do anything about what they're saying, I can just try to do my best to prove them wrong. I think there's room for that style. I hope I can prove that. But I also feel my groundies can improve much more, and I'm working on them - a lot."
Britton has a very solid two-handed backhand, and he's also comfortable hitting it one-handed, with heavy slice, in order to get to the net. His forehand doesn't look like it's entirely ironed out, but then his game isn't built around it, the way it is for so many successful pros. One of his major challenges will be developing a B game for those times when things aren't exactly clicking with his preferred style - as was the case at Roland Garros this year.
Britton went to Paris with a troublesome hip but with no great fear of pursuing his attacking style on red clay. "I went to the French mostly for the experience," Britton said. who more or less said good-bye to clay courts when he left Mississippi. "But I was serving so terribly in France - there was no point coming in, and guys were just taking the return, doing whatever they wanted. I was running in off nothing, basically. But at least I came back in the second set and got four games."
As Bubba might have drawled, Well, that didn't work out so good.
One of Britton's greatest assets is his second serve - when he's really feeling it, his second serve is almost as lethal as his first, and let's remember that old chestnut: You're only as good as your second serve. Or, to put it in more positive terms: If you've got a great second serve you're going to win a lot of tennis matches. There's no service speed clock on Court 19, so I had to ask the former Little League fireballer what kind of service-speed numbers he clocks on a good day.
"I'm not sure," he replied sheepishly, "I haven't had it clocked it in long time. I would think . . . I can't even guess. I wouldn't mind having a clock out on my court once."
Good things come to he who waits, Devin.