The Wall
Patience as a weapon.
Against The Wall you don't lose: you get tired. It's a distinction you only grasp in the third game, when you notice four minutes have gone, you've hit eleven winners, and the score hasn't moved.
How they play
Everything comes back. Not as a figure of speech: everything. The ball you'd put away comes back, the one you'd put away better comes back slightly slower, and the one you thought was impossible comes back on an arc so high you have time to reflect on your life choices. The Wall isn't looking for the winner, it's looking for your error — and it knows the error is coming, because it always does.
Strengths
Economy. It burns almost nothing, physically and mentally, while opponents spend energy on every rally. In third sets it's nearly always the freshest player on court. And it has a rare quality: it doesn't get demoralized. A point lost badly is simply, to The Wall, the previous point.
The weak side
Closing. When the ball is sitting there, high, comfortable, begging to be smashed, The Wall often sends it back anyway — out of habit, out of caution, because attacking isn't in its vocabulary. Against opponents who come to the net with conviction it can end up passive and out of answers.
The ideal partner
Works best with The Commander. One holds, the other decides when it's time to finish it. It's the hardest pairing to beat if you're short on patience, and the most frustrating to face when you're in a hurry.
"Relax, that one's coming back."
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