The ATP season is off to a blazing start, the operative word being "blazing.

 The ATP season is off to a blazing start, the operative word being "blazing.

" Remember how, not so long ago, it seemed that the incremental slowing of the courts combined with the maturation of the power baseline game indicated that the future would belong to the critter generally known as the "grinder," albeit in his most highly developed state?

Then along came Roger Federer, to make us rethink the template. Of course, Federer is a once-in-a-lifetime player—a genius. He's the outlier, even if he dominates the game. When Rafael Nadal emerged as Federer's main rival and nothing less than his nemesis on clay, it lent credence to the conventional wisdom. Federer could be neutralized and beaten, although it required a level of ability and skill set not given to many.

But Federer's degree of skill and offensive capacity had a downstream effect that was profound. He served notice that even if outright attacking tennis, especially traditonal serve-and-volley tennis, was no longer tenable, neither was its polar opposite, defensive, consistency-based grinding—what you might call the David Ferrer problem, if a solidly established Top 10 player can be said to personify one. What Federer did, even before his recent re-embrace of the aggressive game (which was in mid-season form in today's blowout of Nikolay Davydenko in Doha), was force his rivals to quite simply go for more, more of the time. And this mandate to take your shots when they present themselves has become the new norm.