The Clay Court Conundrum

Tennis has always been a sport of specialists. When you are a tennis player, you are either good at this or you are good at that. You are either a good baseline-player or a good serve-and-volleyer. Either a clay-court specialist a grass-court specialist or a hard-court specialist. All-rounder is a term rarely used in tennis. One might go as far to say that in the open era only Roger Federer has come closest to being an all-rounder. But one look at his record against a certain Spaniard on clay is all it takes to throw his 'clay-court specialist' tag out of the window.

This is what makes clay-court the most powerful variable in tennis. It can influence the ranking, the head-to-heads more than anything. Primarily because playing on a clay-court is worlds apart to playing on a hard-court or grass-court. Secondly because of the number of clay-court tournaments in the ATP calender. Now there can be a valid argument here that this number is approximately equal to the number of hard-court tournaments. But it is easier for a clay-court specialist to play well on other surfaces than the other way round. The chance of David Ferrer winning on hard-courts is considerably higher than Andy Murray winning the French Open. This has all worked in the favour of the clay-court specialists. They find it easier to make a place for themselves, easier to earn ranking points and thus, prize money as opposed to a grass-court specialist who will not get more than 2-3 tournaments a year on his favoured surface. A prime example would be the initial years of Rafa Nadal and Andy Murray.

The simple and not-so-thoughtful solution to this would be to reduce the number of clay-court tournaments in favour of other surfaces. But this will not be logical. This is what makes the clay-court a conundrum. Reducing clay-court tournaments would either mean more hard-court tournaments or more grass-court tournaments. Hard-courts, entertaining as they are to the spectators, are brutal on the players’ bodies. And a long season, as we have now, on the hard-courts would lead to more injuries, more withdrawals and more retirements during matches. On the other hand more grass-court tournaments would face a battle with tradition. As for many years now Wimbledon has been the only grass-court major and the only other grass-court tournaments are warmups to the mecca of tennis. So more number of grass-court tournaments would be damaging to the tradition of Wimbledon.

To sum it up, as long as this continues, the baseline battlers like Nadal and Ferrer will always find it easier to maintain their ranking than the big servers and hard hitters like Berdych and del Potro or even the grass-court gliders like Andy Murray. The serve-and-volley will continue to be a part of tennis history. And we will continue to wonder how great a player Andy Roddick might have been had there been no clay-courts in the world.