Steve Dykstra said:
I think grass takes more athletic ability and clay takes more acquired skill. Hard is somewhere in between. The players that do well at Wimbledon generally could have excelled at many other sports. I am not as impressed with the athletic talent of those who succeed at the French.
Um, Bruguera played second division pro soccer upon retiring and lots of injuries and late middle age (in athlete terms), and Krajicek said after to losing to him in straights indoors during his prime before the injuries set in that he couldn't believe how fast he had become. Nadal's uncle was an elite soccer player. Muster was on the Austrian national junior soccer team while simultaneously juggling tennis growing up, which is why he got irritated when people said he didn't have talent, he brought this point up and said he always thought he was good with balls. Moya, not athletic? The guy has a phenomenal pysique yet still moves like a gazelle. To me, a guy like Philipoussis, a great grass court player in his day...especially when the courts still actually played like grass...is a BAD athlete. He's slow and lumbering. He's talented in the hands and strokes wise, but in terms of actual athleticism? Arantxa had some of the quickest feet ever pound for pound in woman's tennis, and her best surface was clay. Kuerten is definitely an athlete, yet not a grass courter.
Really, in my opinion, there are plenty of athletes on clay. It takes athleticism to and agility to recover and run down balls as these guys do. Even though these guys hit with spin, it's not like the balls they're retrieving are lollipops.
I mean look at Ferrero, his feet during his prime, the footwork was astoundingly crisp, talk about quick feet and little steps. Berasategui had to have quick feet and athleticism to run around as many balls as he did to set-up his forehand when that's ALL he had.
There are plenty of great athletes who were primarily clay courters, yet it wasn't due to lack of athleticism that they couldn't succeed elsewhere. It's usually because they never worked on developing a big serve since they grew up on clay and the emphasis on serving there is more on setting up the point for your groundstrokes since big serves don't pay off as much on that surface. That and more tellingly that their extreme grips and swings flat-out limit their ability to return. It's simply NOT possible to return "normally" with this kind of grip on faster surfaces or against big serves. You have to either stand very far back to get your "normal" swing in like Muster and Nadal and Kuerten, but in the process you also give up a ton of court angle to the server. You can do that or you can stand in closer to cut off the server's angles, yet then in torn be forced to chip the ball back weakly without any action or mustard behind it. It's a SEVERE trade off. The name of the game on grass is scooping the ball up early on the rise, big serving, returning, and volleying. All of these things are inhibited by growing up on clay and being taught the extreme grips.
It's not about talent or athleticism. People forget that while it's true clay gives more time to hit that these swing techniques also take more time to wind-up and hit. This is why a guy with classical strokes (Medvedev, Kafelnikov, Lendl, etc.) can also succeed on clay much more readily than a guy with western strokes can on fast grass. Having more time to set-up your shots, which classical technique allows, is NEVER a disadvantage. The reason the guys with classical technique seem to have better reflexes is simply a matter of technique. Their technique allows them to react faster and make EASIER manipulations to the racket when pressured. The western grip is an inherently unstable hitting platform, it can only be hit one way. You can't effectively block the back with it under pressure or guide it, pushign it back deep and into a corner the way Sanguinetti or Kucera for example do beautifully. This is why one Tennis One article called the western grip and the ensuing problems with on the pro tour with it, the "all or nothing" grip. It's very effective when reproduced faithfully and well, but this is only when the athlete is at peak fitness and physicality AND isn't burned out from the physical punishment this style imposes, but just a slight drop off or injury and the results can be devastating as a result.
I mean look at the racket head speed Muster and Kuerten could generate on their one-handed backhands, and Berasategui and Bruguera and Ferrero and Moya on their forehands. We're talking whip-lash racket head speed here, and that does require athleticism and explosiveness in my opinion, that's fast twitch muscles in action right there. This is much of what separates a decent clay courter from the elite ones. The elite ones have as one IMG scout said of Coria "a live arm." That's what they look for, and why they were scouting Coria intently at the Orange Bowl junior tournie back in the day. You can't teach that. And for that matter, you also can't teach Coria's OBVIOUS athleticism either in my opinion. This is a guy whose feet are downright terrier on LSD like.
Basically, the all-time great level clay courters, just like the all-time great grass courters...were BOTH terrific athletes. Just as the elite clay courter is separated from just an ordinary clay courter by that little extra athleticism, so to is the case with the the elite grass courter from the mundane grass courter...think Karlovic, Byron Shelton, Max Mirnyi types compared to Edberg, Becker, Sampras.
Anyway, the SHORT version of my opinion is that...
It's not about talent or athleticism so much, but rather that one style is preferable to another.
Remember, the kind of things that bode well for grass, being able to take the ball early, returning efficiently, developing a big serve and volleys, etc. are all skills that give a decided advantage on ANYTHING outside clay. Three of the four slams PLUS the year ending masters series tournament ALL do NOT favor the extreme western technique in my opinion. Again, it's not about talent. Bruguera, a guy who only played on hard courts ONE time in his life prior to turning 18, and who played Wimbledon just twice prior and not for four years, *serve and volleyed* most of his way to victory over Rafter at Wimbledon in 94. Rafter was ranked 21 in the world at that time and considered highly touted and ATP Newcomer of the Year, so he was not a slouch back then either. To me, this tells me that had Bruguera been raised on hard courts or grass like Henman, he most certainly had the potential to be an "athletic" grass courter as well. The body frame/height, quick feet, agility, soft hands, were all there...but he was developed differently. Simple as that.
The extreme western grip is a disadvantage on EVERYWHERE outside clay. The reason NONE of the all-time greats used the true extreme western style technique is simply because to be an all-time great you have to do more than win just one single major event. Again, four of the five crown jewels of tennis (including the Masters) ALL favor more traditional techniques. The only exceptions to this chain of dominance of the more traditional techniques are Corretja and Kuerten at the Masters Cup, and note this is when they made a concerted effort to slow the courts down, which to me was after 97, that they went that route. And even then, these were really just once in a blue moon events and not something to be counted on with any regularity.
This is all comes down to a style argument, i.e. just as the point of MMA was initially to compare the effectiveness of the different style camps, and not a "talent" or "athleticism" debate, though it's often mistaken for that. It's a case of one style is more "useful" for practical purposes than another on the pro tour when talking about dreams of becoming a tennis great. You can't be "great" when you're "style"/technique only allows you to truly be great on clay. Four of the only 5 tournaments that actually count are arguing against your style, shutting it out.
