Contemporary opinions for slow down of courts

[ForehandCross]

Note :These are from another forum,These are contemporary opinions on the changes of the game. And in those days you really had to be very dedicated tennis fan to be on internet forum

Note 2: Contrary views to the quotes are there but people mostly agree that surface has been slowing down

TTW isn't allowing me to link the threads, I will do so once I find a way around it

Yet almost every poster is claiming that courts are slowed down.

APRIL 2005 :
Title:

Is the ATP Killing Variety in the game????

However, even at Wimbledon all the players are saying the surface is becoming slower and slower and easier to play from the baseline. Federer even said it was faster and easier to serve-volley in Gstaad the following week on Clay than it was at Wimbledon. Henman is another player who has commented on how Wimbledon becomes slower each year which means he will play more from the baseline.

I don't like this. I like the variety of having some guys who like to volley, some who like baseline and some who like both. Everyone knows the volley game is now dying in tennis and this is very sad. If there is only 4 weeks of grass court season anyway why not just leave it fast? This is what makes guys like Agassi one of the greats, he won all four slams and he won Wimbledon back when it was very difficult to play a pure baseline game and win on this very fast surface.

Even the hard courts around the world are all being slowed down so we have more baseline, clay-type rallies and we all know there are a lot of clay tournaments.

Now don't get me wrong, I still like to watch baseline rallies, I am just saying I don't want to have the variety taken out of the game and the options of net attack taken out of the game. I don't want to see in 10 years every player being the same type of robot baseline type player, this could be very boring

JULY 2006 : A thread about USA TODAY article where Martina Narvatilova talks of speed being much slower

Title: players say bounces are higher, pace slower on U.S. Open hardcourts

Surface tension: Players say bounces are higher, pace slower on U.S. Open hardcourts
Updated 7/16/2006 11:38 PM

By Douglas Robson, Special for USA TODAY

For years, players have observed that the once lightning-slick lawns at Wimbledon have gradually slowed down.

One look at the brown baselines this month revealed the obvious: a surface once dominated by net chargers has become a backcourter's paradise.

But the notion that surface speed has changed could just as easily be applied to Grand Slam tournaments in New York, Paris and Melbourne, Australia.

According to players, officials and tournaments, surface speed has been trending toward the middle, meaning grass and indoor courts are slower, clay is faster and balls bounce higher and with less pace on hardcourts.

No less an intergenerational authority than Martina Navratilova is convinced this homogenization has taken over the sport.

"Everything's slower," says the nine-time Wimbledon singles champ, who at 49 has played in four decades on tour.

I think this year they've gone a bit too far with the changes of pace in surfaces. I can understand that they're trying to make tennis more interesting to watch, but I think it should be fine as long as we don't have anything too extreme. (either very short or very long rallies)

From JULY 2007 WELL BEFORE THE FINAL
Title: Not grass tennis anymore on wimby

There's nothing against baseliners, but Wimbledon was supposed to be a time for netplayers, not grinders and moonballers. They managed to ruin Wimbledon

The ball bouncing that way, baseliners ruling :tears:

that is very true, but i saw Canas vs Hewit on court 18 and the bounce was lower than on central court
maybe the bounce on secondary courts is lower than on main courts

JAN 2006
Hewitt: "Mate, it could be slower than [the] French Open."

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silverwhite
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55,915 Posts
Discussion Starter • #1 • Jan 19, 2006 (Edited)
The surface saga continues...

http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/news/interviews/2006-01-19/200601191137675169898.html

Q. What about the court speed? Obviously, you clearly are upset by the slow nature of it. I mean, how much did that play into Juan Ignacio's hands tonight?

LLEYTON HEWITT: Oh, you know, it definitely helped him out, there's no doubt about that. You know, he still played extremely well, and, you know, he didn't give me a lot of opportunities out there.

But, you know, the court surface, it's very hard to dictate play out there. You know, and it's slower than last year, there's no doubt about that, whether it's the balls or not. They say changing to Wilson balls is, you know, to make it quicker or whatever for using a US Open ball, but the facts are this is a totally different top surface to a US Open. You can't compare two balls. This ball fluffs up on this court because it's so rough. It leaves a lot of fur out there on the court. Whereas the US Open is a painted surface on a hard court that's a lot slicker out there so the ball's going to get smaller.

I don't think there's been a lot of homework done how the balls play on this surface for some reason. It's bouncing a lot higher and playing a lot slower even this year from last year.

Q. Last year you said it was playing like the French Open. Do you stand by that?

LLEYTON HEWITT: Mate, it could be slower than French Open.

 

[AnOctorokForDinner]

Hewitt's sass, hehelol.

Sad slowbotting indeed.

 

[Tennis_Freak99]

That can't be true, Fed won on fast courts

 

[ForehandCross]

That can't be true, Fed won on fast courts

True this, these are from early 2005 , so in those days courts were already slowed down.

 

[zagor]

Here's the link for the whole USA today article:
https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/tennis/2006-07-16-surface-tension_x.htm

Many interesting comments there. A few from Fedr himself.

 

[zagor]

Old TTW thread too:

https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/players-say-bounces-are-higher-pace-slower-on-u-s-open-hardcourts.88100/

 

[ForehandCross]

Truth:

fastdunn said:
Where have you been last couple of years?
That's the precisely same reason why Federer became successful from 2003.

It has been well known for years and that's why some people
predicted Nadal will do pretty well on grass and hard courts.
It's no surprise all top players including Federer are doing well
on *all* surfaces.

 

[Sysyphus]

Contemporary tennis isn't slow, so the whole premise behind these discussions is usually a bit misguided.

Serve dominance has continued to increase, the average length of baseline rallies has tended to go down. Modern tennis is centered around serve dominance and short, aggressive baseline points by and large. Sure, they may have tinkered with surfaces (e.g. Wimbledon), but the overall trends of the game is hardly towards a slow one. There has been data on this several times.

The variety in play between surfaces has indeed gone down, though. This is more than anything a result of the strings and racquet tech far more than surfaces. These days, power baselining is the rewarded strategy in all conditions, so net play has largely become a condiment.

The days when you could have 30-shot rallies on clay and serve and volley on grass like in the 80s are over. These days you're going to have a preponderance of short baseline rallies or outright service winners no matter the court speed. It's just a matter of degree. If you bother to actually look at some of the stat graphics from this Rome tournament, for instance, you'll see that it's not uncommon for players to post maybe 60–70% of serves returned. That's on CLAY. 30–40% of serves often don't even make it back into play. So a lack of quick points isn't really the problem here.

 

[mike danny]

That can't be true, Fed won on fast courts

Not fast, but still faster than the surfaces since the 2010's.

Just look at the USO from 2003 until 2010 and compare it with the surface afterwards. Even Wimb was slightly faster in 2003-2004 than in 2019.

 

[SonnyT]

In any era, court conditions are always to some extent catered to the top players, and what the audience want to see. The tournament directors and staffs don't decide something as important as court conditions in a vacuum.

Remember last year, when the director of some Netherlands tournament proclaimed that he purposely tailored his courts to Federer's liking! I don't remember if Fed won that tourney or not!

I remember hearing on TV, when McEnroe and Sampras were kings at USO, they would come to Queens and tell USTA to make the courts faster! At that time American tennis was still tops, so people listened to them.

I also remember from TV, one year Wimbledon handed out questionnaire to the paying customers on the grounds what they wanted to see. And the answer: they want to see more rallies!

 

[MotoboXer]

It seems slowing of conditions made players angrier. .
Agassi stared dropping F bombs later in his career. .
Murrovic with their anger issues ..

 

[Markus Kaila]

And the answer: they want to see more rallies!

The most common rally length (pro men) is 1 (one!). That’s a service ace or a service winner. The next most common rally length is 3, that’s a serve, return and one more legal shot.

 

[Winners or Errors]

Hmm, so 60-70% of serves are returned into play. That means there is a point played 60-70% of the time that is longer than one shot. Of those, given that 70% of pro points are between 0 and 4 shots, half of them are longer than 4 shots, so 35% are longer than four shots. That's more than 1 in 3. I'm not sure I'm following how tennis has not gotten slower. What were the statistics off of clay prior to the slow down of courts? Somehow, those didn't make it into this discussion at all. Kind of hard to claim nothing has changed when there's no statistical baseline whatsoever. I don't know them. I am merely curious.