The long shots of Tennis: A generation of giants is pacing the pristine lawns of Wimbledon

Wimbledon is the real home of giants. Sport is so often the stuff of dreams that commentators, inevitably, are predisposed to hyperbole just to keep up, but even so, some of SW19’s temporary residents wouldn’t look out of place descending a beanstalk in their tennis whites.

Last year’s 6ft 5in finalist Milos Raonic pummelled the 6ft 5in German Jan-Lennard Struff with his sledgehammer-like serves, clocking a mighty 20 aces during the Canadian’s win on Court One. On Court Two, the 6ft 6in Argentinian Juan Martín del Potro beat the 6ft 5in 21-year-old Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis in four sets, trading thunderous forehands (and the odd cushioned drop shot) like Jupiter and Mars moving furniture. In the women’s game, the current favourites are two-time champion Petra Kvitova, who stands at 6ft, and Karolína Plíšková, 6ft 1in, who will play Slovak Magdaléna Rybáriková (5ft 11in) tomorrow.

Tennis players are tall, and getting taller. Our own Andy Murray is 6ft 3in, respectable relative to most of us but practically dweeby compared to some of his competitors. American John Isner is 6ft 10in (he’s through), while Ivo Karlovic and Reilly Opelka are 6ft 11in (they didn’t make it into the next round).

Granted, both players are outliers who rarely make the later rounds - but others are catching them up, and holding their own. Kevin Anderson is 6ft 8in, Alexander Zverev, Marin Cilic and Sam Querry are 6ft 6in and Dustin Brown is 6ft 5in.

“It’s something coaches are increasingly looking for,” says Dr Nicola Swann, senior lecturer in sports and exercise biomechanics at Kingston University. “That’s emphasised in sports where there is a benefit to having long levers - your arms or legs - such as tennis, in which it’s going to particularly benefit you in the serve. The surfaces have changed and the equipment’s changed, it’s more of a service game than it used to be, and that benefits the tallest players.”

The advantages are obvious. “You’ve got broader reach, you can contact the ball earlier and you’ve got a bigger target area to serve the ball into, higher up,” says Dr Tim Exell, lecturer in rehabilitation science and biomechanics at the University of Portsmouth. “That’s the obvious advantage. The second is the lead length; you’re able to generate more force and power and put that onto the ball, giving your opponent less time to react.”

Gangly limbs - a social disadvantage when you’re growing up - are rapidly becoming gold dust in many sports. Leading up to London 2012, the British Olympic Association and UK Sport ran the Sporting Giants programme, where they identified certain sports such as rowing and identified “long lever” candidates. Helen Glover, winner of Great Britain’s first ever Olympic women’s rowing gold medal with team-mate Heather Stanning, was only spotted through the programme in 2008, when she was working as a PE teacher.

Natalie Dunman, Head of Performance Pathways at the English Institute of Sport, was involved in the program. “Unusual body shapes, in the right sport, are an advantage” she says. “We’re getting better at signposting people to sports they can be good at. That was the point of the campaign.”

That said, tennis is more than just paying hip service, and a crashing serve is only your opening salvo in a gruelling duel. “There’s pay-off in terms of agility - as you get taller, you get slower,” says Swann. “Also, it’s not good enough just to have long levers, you’ve got to have the strength to move them rapidly through a specific range of motions for a particular sport.”

The edge that the tallest men gain in serving is cancelled out by their disadvantage when returning serve. This is no bad thing for purists. In Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, both a mere 6ft 1in, Djokovic, 6ft 2in, and Murray, you have proof that the giants still don’t dominate - yet.

Generally speaking, that’s because tennis is as much about being able to cover ground as it is putting your opponent away with a jackhammer serve. “Tennis is a movement sport at the highest level, especially now with the technology of rackets and strings,” serial title winner turned commentator John McEnroe has previously observed. “A male player from 6ft 1in to 6ft 4in is going to move much better in a confined space than someone who is 6ft 5in to 6ft 10in.”

McEnroe, with his 155 ATP titles, was hardly found wanting but he was still only 5ft 11in. Furthermore, Swann points out that today’s lighter rackets also make it easier for the tallest players too, “as it’s easier to swing and serve”, reducing that agility handicap. Modern training techniques, she says, will only help to accentuate the positives for taller players and eliminate the negatives.

“If you haven’t got sufficient muscle segment to move that segment at high speed there’s no advantage”, she says. “But certainly there seems to be a trend toward athletes who have an increased advantage in their limb segments and then helping to train them so they can optimise that performance. They might look for better muscle moment in their arms - some people have an advantage in the way their muscles attach to their bones, which gives them better leverage to generate force and move their limbs through quickly.”

Height is increasingly winning out at junior level. “Among the top 100 juniors each year from 2000 to 2009 the tallest players (6ft 5in and over for men and 6ft and over for women) typically sit in the middle of the rankings,” Wiley Schubert Reed, a former New York State junior tennis player, has said. “But they do better as pros: they were ranked on average approximately 127 spots higher than shorter players their age after four years for men, and approximately 113 spots higher after four years for women.”

Swann believes that, for now, the only way is up. “It’s hard to see where that line will be drawn. Obviously there’s a general trend in the population that everyone is getting taller. That’s down to better nutrition, particularly during the phases of growth and development.” But there’s a glass ceiling. “If you get very tall, your risk of injury increases. So there’s a cut-off — but where is it? If you look at tennis players, the tallest are not the top of the crop — at the moment. The best are those who are tall but not massively so.”

So no 7ft tennis stars? “Never say never, if the whole population continues to increase. But one of the things with tennis is the size of the court. If you get too tall you effectively outgrow the court. It’s no longer an advantage because there’s an optimum size to take advantage of your height, beyond which any gain is actually detrimental.” To paraphrase police chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) in Jaws, to go any further, we’re gonna need a bigger court.