Rally length is a choice, not a fitness verdict

Long rallies get read as evidence of endurance when they are usually evidence that neither player would commit.

There is a comfortable story about long rallies. Two athletes, immense fitness, a battle of wills. Sometimes that is what you are watching. More often you are watching two players who have both decided that the risk of going first is higher than the cost of another neutral ball, and the rally continues by mutual consent until somebody gets bored or makes an unforced error out of sheer accumulation.

That is a tactical stalemate, not a fitness contest, and the distinction matters because the two problems have opposite solutions. If the rallies are long because your opponent will not miss, the answer is patience and better depth. If they are long because you cannot find a way to change the direction of the point without exposing yourself, the answer is a shot you do not currently have, and no amount of running will supply it.

The tell is where the balls are landing. A genuine attritional rally has both players hitting deep and being pushed behind the baseline. A stalemate rally has a lot of balls landing around the service line, comfortable, neither deep enough to hurt nor short enough to attack, because both players are hitting at a percentage that guarantees they will not miss and therefore guarantees they will not threaten either.

Which brings me to conditioning, and a slightly unpopular opinion. Baseline endurance work in tennis is often training for a scenario the player is creating themselves. Getting fitter makes the stalemate more sustainable and therefore more attractive, which is precisely the wrong incentive. The player becomes very good at a pattern that a braver opponent will simply refuse to enter.

I would rather see practice sets with a shot limit. Twelve shots and the point is dead, replayed, no winner. It sounds artificial and it is, and it produces a fascinating amount of discomfort in players who have built their whole game on outlasting people.

None of this means fitness is optional. You still have to be able to play the third set.

But endurance is what lets you execute a plan, not a substitute for having one.