Motivation Quote by Stefan Edberg

Edberg’s line is tennis pragmatism dressed up as mindset advice: win the point before it even starts. A great serve doesn’t just earn free points; it manufactures a friendlier world for everything that comes after. When he says volleys get “so much easier,” he’s talking about geometry and psychology at once. A heavy, well-placed serve forces a weak, floated return. Suddenly the net isn’t a risk, it’s an invitation. The volley becomes less a test of reflexes and more a formality.

The subtext is classic serve-and-volley doctrine from an era when grass was faster, racquets were changing, and baseline grinding hadn’t fully taken over. Edberg, one of the cleanest net-rushers ever, is quietly defending a style that depends on continuous forward motion. The serve is the ignition; the volley is the payoff. Without the serve doing damage, the volleyer is exposed, forced to pick up half-volleys or absorb passing shots under pressure. With it, he’s dictating.

His tossed-off “obviously” is the tell. Confidence isn’t a poster on the locker-room wall here; it’s a mechanical consequence of repetition and first-strike success. Serve well and you feel entitled to the net. You move earlier, commit harder, take the ball out in front. That’s the hidden loop: a strong serve creates simpler volleys, simpler volleys reinforce belief, and belief sharpens the serve again. Edberg makes it sound simple because, at his level, it had to be.