Finally others are talking court speed

S

SublimeTennis

Professional
I'm getting sick and tired of all of these tournaments slowing down their surfaces. Fed wipes Djokovich of the court in Dubai, not even close, then at Indian Wells, they can measure the courts now I guess, they said it was "40% slower"! 40%! I mean Federer played horrible, but sick of it.

The announcers were saying "The ATP needs to start talking to these tournament directors to speed some of them up, to get some variety in Tennis". See they keep courts slow so that rallies are extended, so that more commercials can be shown=more money, but tennis suffers, how long will it be until we don't look at who won, but who lost, "Wow Bob, look Joe only had 30 errors, he's good".

I don't think it's fair to have ALL courts fast like in the 90's and all through the history of tennis, keep clay which is hard to speed up a lot, but you'd have a wonderful mix of baseline defensive players, baseline attackers, then aggressive attackers to the net, come on even the biggest fan of baseliners, wouldn't you love to see guys coming to the net against your baseliners? They make classic matches, McEnroe/Borg, Sampras/Agassi. What's more boring than two baseliners like a Djokovich/Murray match?

On another topic really glad about Federer, clearly there was something wrong with him yesterday, not taking anything away from Novak, HE'S A GREAT PLAYER OK SO DON'T JUMP ON ME, but yesterday it was on Feds racquet, Djokovich did nothing special yesterday, in the second Fed played like he's been playing and it wasn't close.

If half of the tournaments were like Dubai, and Dubai is slower than courts in the 90's, Fed would dominate still just like he did in '04-'07, no one could stand up to him.
 
If courts remained fast, players like Isner, Karlovic, Roddick, SOderling, Del Potro, Tsonga would have had a better chance against Federer and probably he wouldnt dominate as well.
 
Bukmeikara said:
If courts remained fast, players like Isner, Karlovic, Roddick, SOderling, Del Potro, Tsonga would have had a better chance against Federer and probably he wouldnt dominate as well.
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It's not about Federer....In fact Federer advocates having a mix of slow and fast (because he isn't selfish)...ATP needs to put a stop to homogenization of surfaces.

We have an entire season of slow courts...Need some variety.
 
I understand what are you trying to say, but not all surfaces can be fast like Dubai.

I'm fine with IW or Miami being slow (tho I wouldn't mind if they speed up Miami a bit) as long as there are other tournaments with medium and fast surface.
 
If you are an unbiased fan you could see that the match was never on Fed's racket yesterday. The 3rd set was a gift.

And Novak did not do anything special ? Please watch replay of the first set again.

On topic , we need a mix and I agree there are too many slow courts now. But why not let Novak enjoy just like Fed and Rafa did .
 
vanioMan said:
I understand what are you trying to say, but not all surfaces can be fast like Dubai.

I'm fine with IW or Miami being slow (tho I wouldn't mind if they speed up Miami a bit) as long as there are other tournaments with medium and fast surface.
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I've got news for ya....They're not!...None of them are
 
Alien said:
I will tell you what is far more boring. Raonic / Isner / Karlovic / Querrey on a fast court. Those players can put me to sleep.
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Murray - Djokovic on a slow court has put me to sleep repeatedly. Just saying.

Both extremes aren't fun to watch.
 
I don't think there is as much collusion behind it as OP but I do think the tours could ask the events to at least be within certain norms.

We all know different surfaces play faster or slower, amd the variety is fine with me, but when some are extremely fast and some are extremely slow I do think it starts to have a negative impact on the players and the game.

Think of it like golf courses. They all vary in grass length and green speed to some extent and that is part of the strategy, but bodies like the PGA have standards as to how much they can vary and still host an event.
 
Yaa, let's have some speed. And speedier courts as well. Variation would do tennis good. Too much grind sadly, too much grind.
 
1. The motivation for slowing the conditions, IMO, is to hedge your bets in terms of getting a Big 4 matchup at the end of the event. There's no doubt in my mind that slower conditions favor the Big 4 over the field.

2. I agree that variety is good, but do we not have that right now? Australia is typically medium-slow. The U.S. Open is quicker.

Slow - Indian Wells, Miami
Fast - Dubai, Cincinnati, Basel
The rest of the hard courts are somewhere in between - Canada, Shanghai, Paris, WTF

What change do people propose, specifically?

3. Could not disagree more with your match analysis. Djokovic was playing exceptionally well at the start. Federer played well also, otherwise he'd have been blown off the court, but the match was never on his racquet. Djokovic had a chance to serve out the TB at 5-4 and hit two DFs in a row, then dumped a backhand into the net on set point. He gave Federer at least 4 points in the TB. The only thing wrong with Federer yesterday was his opponent. He played at a pretty high level himself for much of the match. Nothing to be ashamed of in losing to the world's best player on a day when he brought his A game.
 
SublimeTennis said:
See they keep courts slow so that rallies are extended, so that more commercials can be shown=more money
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I wonder how true this is. We've heard often that the unpredictable length of tennis matches makes it hard to sell on TV. The NBA TV deal just went nuts; not sure we will see anything similar for tennis in the future.

Quicker courts would not necessarily solve this dilemma either, though
 
Match was not on Djokovics raquet? He did nothing special? Dude, what world are you living in? The whole match was on his raquet. Even the third set. He gave that away with DFs basically. We have to be objective here.

Watch the match again.

And Fed didn't wipe him off the court in dubai. Fed had 2 BPs and converted them, while novak had 7 and converted none. That is unusual and on a different day Djokovic would have broken him.
 
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Bukmeikara said:
If courts remained fast, players like Isner, Karlovic, Roddick, SOderling, Del Potro, Tsonga would have had a better chance against Federer and probably he wouldnt dominate as well.
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Actually it's not necessarily the truth. Why these players attacking game can work better on faster surfaces, their defense game/return game suffer as well.

Players like Nishikori, Davydenko, even Ferrer who have the movement but maybe not the power on the serve can benefit more than those slower power players you mentionned who can use some extra time to set-up their heavy shots.
 
RF-18 said:
Match was not on Djokovics raquet? He did nothing special? Dude, what world are you living in? The whole match was on his raquet. Even the third set. He gave that away with DFs basically. We have to be objective here.

Watch the match again.

And Fed didn't wipe him off the court in dubai. Fed had 2 BPs and converted them, while novak had 7 and converted none. That is unusual and on a different day Djokovic would have braked.
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"broken".....not nit picking my friend, just a little correction. You are very good otherwise.
 
beast of mallorca said:
"broken".....not nit picking my friend, just a little correction. You are very good otherwise.
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If it's not nit picking then I'm completely fine with correction. I want to be corrected if I'm wrong cause you learn. I know the word broken, but got it wrong this time.
 
So, for those unsatisfied with current conditions, what, specifically, would you like to see? What changes to which surfaces?
 
Halep and Jankovic could barely win points. The majority of points they had were endless rallies till one of them failed (because of tiredness).

I even like to watch some of those rallies, but when the entire match is about those kind of rallies, no other type of point, you feel something should be changed. The match at the end seemed just an endurance contest.

The Federer-Djokovic final was much more watchable, because even on that slow court they are able to hit through the court (at least sometimes), but the tennis in the Dubai final was more exciting (in my opinion, obviously).

I don't mean to have all the courts sped up.

Indian Wells, Miami and AusOpen already were very very slow hard courts in the 90s and 80s (AusOpen played on rebound ace since 1988 till 2007, on grass before ), but to have VARIATION of court conditions and balls (different speed of hard courts and bring back indoor carpet).
 
SublimeTennis said:
I'm getting sick and tired of all of these tournaments slowing down their surfaces. Fed wipes Djokovich of the court in Dubai, not even close, then at Indian Wells, they can measure the courts now I guess, they said it was "40% slower"! 40%! I mean Federer played horrible, but sick of it.

The announcers were saying "The ATP needs to start talking to these tournament directors to speed some of them up, to get some variety in Tennis". See they keep courts slow so that rallies are extended, so that more commercials can be shown=more money, but tennis suffers, how long will it be until we don't look at who won, but who lost, "Wow Bob, look Joe only had 30 errors, he's good".

I don't think it's fair to have ALL courts fast like in the 90's and all through the history of tennis, keep clay which is hard to speed up a lot, but you'd have a wonderful mix of baseline defensive players, baseline attackers, then aggressive attackers to the net, come on even the biggest fan of baseliners, wouldn't you love to see guys coming to the net against your baseliners? They make classic matches, McEnroe/Borg, Sampras/Agassi. What's more boring than two baseliners like a Djokovich/Murray match?

On another topic really glad about Federer, clearly there was something wrong with him yesterday, not taking anything away from Novak, HE'S A GREAT PLAYER OK SO DON'T JUMP ON ME, but yesterday it was on Feds racquet, Djokovich did nothing special yesterday, in the second Fed played like he's been playing and it wasn't close.

If half of the tournaments were like Dubai, and Dubai is slower than courts in the 90's, Fed would dominate still just like he did in '04-'07, no one could stand up to him.
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nothing wrong with Fed at all...you have any evidence?...you really shouldn't say that and then beg people to not jump on you...weak bridge
 
Fast courts or not, Federer aint dominating anything at his age. Also how about just speeding up SOME courts for the sake of variety, for the sake of tennis. Not for the sake of any one player or group of players.
 
mattennis said:
Halep and Jankovic could barely win points. The majority of points they had were endless rallies till one of them failed (because of tiredness).

I even like to watch some of those rallies, but when the entire match is about those kind of rallies, no other type of point, you feel something should be changed. The match at the end seemed just an endurance contest.

The Federer-Djokovic final was much more watchable, because even on that slow court they are able to hit through the court (at least sometimes), but the tennis in the Dubai final was more exciting (in my opinion, obviously).

I don't mean to have all the courts sped up.

Indian Wells, Miami and AusOpen already were very very slow hard courts in the 90s and 80s (AusOpen played on rebound ace since 1988 till 2007, on grass before ), but to have VARIATION of court conditions and balls (different speed of hard courts and bring back indoor carpet).
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This.

IW/Miami/USO are fine as is. Traditionally slow. Then the clay season. Add a grass masters series. But speed Wimbledon up slightly, speed up USO for sure, as well as Canada. Cincy is already pretty fast. Bring back carpet in the fall.
 
SublimeTennis said:
Fed wipes Djokovich of the court in Dubai, not even close.
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Good lord I can't even get past your second sentence before you completely fail. You obviously didn't WATCH the Dub final because Djoker had more than TWICE as many BP opportunities than Fed and just didn't convert, whereas Fed converted his TWO BPs. If you replayed that scenario 10 times Djoker prob wins that match 70% of the time. But yah, "wiped the floor" and "not even close."

If you want to be taken seriously on this board actually watch the matches u want to comment on as opposed to regurgitating some garbage summary a Fed Fanboy served you.

On the actual topic, I think most tennis fans would prefer more variety in surfaces, some faster hard courts mixed in and a grass masters. Rafa, of course, would fight against those changes to the death.
 
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SublimeTennis said:
Fed wipes Djokovich of the court in Dubai, not even close
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What????? That was damn close match. Djokovic played a little better than Federer most of the time but then when he was serving 15/40 3 times, federer answered with 4 big serves in a row everytime. Then Djokovic had another lone BP and Federer saved with an ace.

Federer only won 39% of his 2nd serves points on that match and only had 2 BPs the whole match, while Djokovic had 7. Federer was simply way more clutch. Only in the mind of a crazy fanboy that Federer "wiped Djokovic" and that it "was not even close".

Or you simply didn't watch the match.

PS: Federer only 8 more points than Djokovic but had one more service game than Djokovic. So it was even closer. I don't have the stats on Winners/UE, can someone else post it?
 
VexlanderPrime said:
Good lord I can't even get past your second sentence before you completely fail. You obviously didn't WATCH the Dub final because Djoker had more than TWICE as many BP opportunities than Fed and just didn't convert, whereas Fed converted his TWO BPs. If you replayed that scenario 10 times Djoker prob wins that match 70% of the time. But yah, "wiped the floor" and "not even close."

If you want to be taken seriously on this board actually watch the matches u want to comment on as opposed to regurgitating some garbage summary a Fed Fanboy served you.
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Haha, we posted at the exact same time, vexlander. But my post was longer so I started writing it earlier so you agreed with me ;).

Actually Djokovic had almost 4 times more BP opportunities than Federer.

And to the other feds fans: I'm not saying Djokovic should have won. Federer was damn clutch and took that match away when the had 2 opportunities. He's the GOAT afterall. But that was a damn close match.

Djokovic was sending bombs left and right. Points ended early most of the time. Just like he did against Berdych the match before.
 
spinovic said:
So, for those unsatisfied with current conditions, what, specifically, would you like to see? What changes to which surfaces?
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I'll stick to what I'd like to see in the Majors:

Australian - Medium/Fast speed, medium/low bounce hard court

French - Slow speed, high bounce red clay

Wimbledon - Fast speed, low bounce grass (revert to grass used prior to current change)

U.S. Open - Medium/slow, medium bounce Har-Tru (Green clay)
 
IW biggest problem is the conditions are too fast for the court, it only needs tweaked a little surface wise. Too many matches were absolutely horrible, and the unforced errors were not even close! Most early matches had balls out by feet not inches, net balls halfway down the net, if they even reached the net... no bounce was the same and the players had a hard time adjusting to that 1 variable. The surface is way to gritty and does not compliment the conditions.
 
okdude1992 said:
[/B]

This.

IW/Miami/USO are fine as is. Traditionally slow. Then the clay season. Add a grass masters series. But speed Wimbledon up slightly, speed up USO for sure, as well as Canada. Cincy is already pretty fast. Bring back carpet in the fall.
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USO is NOT traditionally slow. It is traditionally fast. Leave IW and Miami as is, speed up the entire fall circuit (everything after FO), cut clay in half, and I'm happy.
 
Definitely need faster courts. High risk tactics like s&v and going for lines are just not rewarded anymore because they have littl return. The result now is a lot of safe shots until someone gets a short ball.
 
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