Have tennis courts become slower?

It’s that time of the year again; the time which every tennis fan across the world marks in his calendar way before anything else. With the French Open just concluded, Wimbledon is around the corner and for fans in India, that means daily doses of archive footage from the Championships over the years. As a young fan myself, I started watching the game seriously only post 1998, what strikes me almost immediately when watching matches from yesteryear is the serve-and-volley style almost unique to Wimbledon. With the baseline game dominating completely these days and virtually no one coming to the net, the serve and volley game is for all purposes, dead. While there have been arguments that players are now fitter and stronger and rely heavily on topspin, thus preferring to stay at the baseline, a stronger suggestion is that court speeds at Wimbledon- especially- and around the world have also been dramatically reduced.

Have they been reduced, and if they have, do they favour certain players? Let’s try to examine that through this piece.

Till the early part of this century, the conventional rule was that grass courts were the fastest, clay courts the slowest and hard courts falling somewhere in between. As a result of this, it was rare to see a player winning slams on all surfaces as certain players were better suited to a particular surface than others. However, this , while adding to the competitiveness and variety on tour, also started to have adverse effects on the game. Clay court specialists tended to shy away from or completely discount their chances at Wimbledon and to an extent, at the US and Australian Opens as well due to the speed of the courts. Wimbledon especially, was dominated by serve-and-volleyers with Andre Agassi being the only baseliner to win the tournament through the 90s. Murmurs of disapproval also started to rise among fans, who complained that faster courts resulted in shorter rallies, thus depriving them of the drama of a long rally.

As the new century dawned, the All England Club decided to take this criticism rather seriously, implementing moves which ultimately would reduce the speed of the courts at the Championships, paving the way for the baseliners to dominate. And Wimbledon is not the only tournament which has done this. After his first-round encounter at the US Open last year, Roger Federer was quick to comment on how slow the courts had become and expressed concern, stating that the surfaces at all four slams were now becoming far too similar. Even outside of the Grand Slams, tournaments such as the one in Rotterdam, which used to have one of the fastest courts on tour, was reduced this year to a paceless, green court.

Has this been beneficial for tennis?

There is an argument that it has benefited certain players- which is true. Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are incredible players but would they have succeeded at Wimbledon if the speed of the courts had not been reduced? Perhaps they would have, but it would have been a lot tougher. Players who would have never given themselves a chance on a grass court have changed their mindsets ;two-time Grand Slam champion Marat Safin famously said that ‘grass is for cows, not tennis’ but mounted an impressive run to the 2008 semifinals at Wimbledon on the slower courts. Spectators too seemed to have got what they wanted. Yes, there is still a small percentage of fans, especially those of the older generation, who lament the glories of serve-and-volley tennis, but on the whole, tennis is about entertainment and increased competition, longer rallies. As a result, longer matches have all been beneficial for the tennis-viewing public.

However, while the slowing of the courts has been beneficial, it has affected the game negatively as well. A direct result of courts becoming similar all over the world is the dominance of the Grand Slams by a certain group of players over the past few years. Without taking any credit away from the top three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, the fact that 28 of the last 29 Grand Slams have been won by them also goes to show that if a player can win on one surface, he can win on all. The three have superior games to everyone else on tour and as there is not much difference in the courts at the Slams, naturally dominate them due to their superiority. If, during the 90s, Pete Sampras were to lose in the 3^rd round of the French Open or Gustavo Kuerten were to lose in the 2^nd round at the US Open, people would have been surprised but not shocked. On the other hand, were Nadal or Djokovic to lose today in the early rounds of ANY slam during the year,the knives would be out and an ‘inquest’ launched into the reasons for their loss, such has become the extent of their domination through the tour.

The slowing down of the courts, while it has its drawbacks, can ultimately be looked upon as a ‘necessary evil’. Tennis, like most sports, is now largely commercialized and organizers must cater to what the majority of the spectators want. With both spectators happier and more players benefiting than suffering, it seems to be a win-win situation for the powers-that-be and expect the trend to continue for the foreseeable future.