Few years ago there was the debate that the tennis game was too fast so as to give a huge advantage to “boom boom players”. The point was a fair one as you would see entire matches with people just blasting aces here and there without any particular thinking or strategy behind it.
Then the tennis industry started to slow everything down and the game became much more tactical. Maybe it went a bit too far. This year’s Australian Open was really too long (almost 6 hours) and Wimbledon starts to lose something as it is favouring baseliners (isn’t grass about serve and volley?). This year’s WTF courts were incredibly slow to see very uncharacteristic rallies for an indoor court.
Slowing down the courts has also favoured player such as Nadal, Djokovic and Murray. Of course, they completely deserve their achievements, but wouldn’t be better to see a bit more of Tsonga, LLodra, Benneteau, Dimitrov or Janowicz?
Federer and Hewitt have played so many wonderful matches on faster courts (see the ones above and below) to share their opinions.
Federer
Talking about the fact that attacking is now often not the best solution
“It’s an easy fix. Just make quicker courts, then it’s hard to defend,” Federer said. “Attacking style is more important. It’s only on this type of slow courts that you can defend the way we are all doing right now.”
“What you don’t want is that you hit 15 great shots and at the end, it ends up in an error,” he said.
“So I think sometimes quicker courts do help the cause. I think it would help from time to time to move to something a bit faster.
“That would help to learn, as well, for many different players, different playing styles, to realise that coming to the net is a good thing, it’s not a bad thing.”
“So I think sometimes quicker courts do help the cause. I think it would help from time to time to move to something a bit faster.
“That would help to learn, as well, for many different players, different playing styles, to realise that coming to the net is a good thing, it’s not a bad thing.”
Hewitt
“The quicker the courts, the better for me too,” he said.
“I saw a little bit of the Masters Cup (ATP Finals) in London and that looked to be an awfully slow court as well.
“It’s hard for guys to hit winners and hit through the court.
“It’s a mixture of the balls as well. If it’s rough at all then the balls fluff and get a lot heavier and after two games you feel like you need a ball change.
“Roger’s game style suits a quicker court as well. He’s got such good hands and reflexes that it would make life tough playing against him on those courts.
“That was the fun thing about playing the Olympics at Wimbledon. I felt it was a lot quicker court than four weeks before when we played the Wimbledon Championships this year.”
Here some more “Federer – Hewitt fast tennis”
