By Pat Cash

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Our Wimbledon columnist, the 1987 champion Pat Cash, looks back on this year's men's singles

The slower courts definitely helped the baseliners this year. I don't think they intentionally slowed it down. I think they had been so wet that courts became slower.

That makes it very, very difficult to beat a guy like Lleyton Hewitt. It's hard enough to beat him anyway on a fast grass court.

Queen's is a much quicker grass court and he won there too. He did lose a set to Henman there and that's probably the difference between the two courts; Henman couldn't grab a set off him this time, but he could a couple of weeks beforehand.

It's sad to say, but serve and volley is pretty much dead and gone.

There will be some guys with big serves that come in, but only those guys will be able to do it.

I saw it coming a few years ago and said: 'Pat Rafter and Pete Sampras - watch them because they're a dying breed, almost extinct'.

The next year Goran Ivanisevic came along and proved me wrong, but I was only about a year late.

I think we'll see more and more guys like Hewitt and David Nalbandian getting through unless we speed the courts up and give a chance to some of the guys who hit the volleys.

This year was the first time ever that we had two guys that didn't serve-volley any balls in the final and we will see that again in the future.

It's a real shame. Volleying is the most exciting part of the game, but it's dying. It's unfortunate, but that just seems to be the way it is.

I think it's down to the court surfaces and the balls. They're getting slower and slower. A good volley player cannot survive for the rest of the year - it's not just here. This is the easiest tournament for them to survive.

You can imagine what it's like for the rest of the year for a serve-volleyer.

That's just the way of the future. Hopefully, bit by bit, it will change.

As for the final itself, it was a disappointing one but I suppose you can't have exciting finals like last year's every time.

Hewitt was just way too good.

Nalbandian as a player is not that far behind him, but I think it was all a bit too much for him. By the time he'd settled down, it was too late. He didn't put more than a couple of games together in a row.

But just to get to the final was phenomenal. Really that was the story of the tournament.

Sure, Henman always gets lots of coverage, but this guy was playing his first ever grassscourt tournament.

Having said that he hasn't really beaten anybody along the way, but that's the way this tournament's been.

It was similar for Lleyton Hewitt. He beat Tim Henman, but he pretty much cruised through the other matches. He should have cruised through Sjeng Schalken but got himself in trouble and then got himself out of it.

Hewitt was the best player out there. He deserves to have won. He was the form player coming in and is a class above everybody else at the moment.

He's not that far ahead of everybody but he's just peaked very well. The players that should have done well haven't done well this year. Guys like Tim Henman really struggled with their form for whatever reason and some of the big names have dropped out. Hewitt was the one who really played his own game and he simply cruised through.

But we haven't seen any real terrific matches.

Greg Rusedski for one match (against Andy Roddick) - that was one of the most outstanding performances. But he faded in the next match and that was disappointing.