Serve And Volley

I don't watch much of Tennis these days. I manage to catch the action sometimes in Grand Slam finals. I wish to follow tennis more regularly going forward. With my touch with tennis (watching!) being almost non-existent over the last few years, i was shocked when i first found that the art of serve and volley was dead. No one did that even at Wimbledon! Navratilova, McEnroe, Edberg, Becker, Sampras - the best of tennis that i've seen were from these server-and-volley-ers.

Nirmal Shekar writes:

The great left-handed conjurer is still around, in these
parts, keeping us entertained from the commentary box. But the stroke that he
played with such breathtaking virtuosity — the volley — is on its way to
extinction. When the odd player now chooses to serve and volley on every point,
it almost seems like a vestigial trait

Even Roger Federer, who can masterfully play every stroke in
the book — and some that are not there because the ones who wrote the game’s
manual could not have even dreamed of his brand of shotmaking genius — has won
at least three of his four titles (barring the first, in 2003, when he served
and volleyed for the most part against Mark Philippoussis

Update: I'm glad that Federer won last night but i have a question (guess its obvious to regular tennis watchers). Federer is way behind Nadal on clay while Nadal is relatively closer to Federer on grass. Does it in anyway raise a question mark on the claim that Federer is the greatest ever? Yesterday, it was Federer who was made to run around. The rare trips he made to the net resulted in him missing the simplest of volleys (atleast twice, and in crucial situations). I missed the most important part of the match when Federer saved four breakpoints in the final set and i rejoined the action to see Nadal serving at 2-5. That must have been something. All said and done, it was immensely satisfying to see a clay court specialist - having said that, like Vijay Amritraj said, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between Nadal on clay and Nadal on grass - losing.