In servers, the hitting animation is not shown when you hit instantly broken items, such as tall grass or torches (it will show for the first one you hit).

Survival.

This appears to only happen on servers.

If attempt to hold down the mouse button in order to hit many tall grass/torch/etc. blocks that will break instantly, the punching animation will only show once and then will not occur, the blocks will still break.

To reproduce:

1: Go on a server.
2: Find a patch of tall grass.
3: Look up at the sky and punch the air, still holding the mouse button.
4: While you're still holding down that mouse button, move your cross hair over the tall grass. It'll break, but the animation will not show.