Tennis Returns To Its Grass Roots: The Magic Is All in the Green Stuff

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: June 10, 2010

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It’s where lawn tennis began. It takes loving care, and ideally an English climate, to perfect it. But when it’s right, the sappy, greasy, springy grass can offer the swiftest, most subtle, most sensuous tennis of all.

The Wimbledon lawns are the best-known patches of turf in the world, but it’s the grass of the historic Queens Club that is more often considered the most perfect iteration of the medium.

Perhaps that is because Wimbledon has, very gradually, had to adapt to the rigors of a more muscular and gruelling game as the other tools of tennis have evolved.

The modern racket is capable of so much more than its wooden forebear, and the player who wields it can maintain longer and more powerful rallies and matches than ever before.

The traditional pattern of wear that used to spread from baseline to the ‘T’ to the net has been replaced by a raw, brown swathe across the entire baseline.

So the grass, pounded as it is, has had to become more resilient—incorporating more perennial rye—and with that extra toughness has come a higher bounce and slower shoot-through.

But Wimbledon’s courts continue to challenge the parts of players that other Slams can’t reach. So what are the characteristics that differentiate it from clay and synthetics?

First, the ball moves off this surface more quickly and with a little less bounce. The sap and the natural moisture in the underlying soil make the surface a little greasy so the ball can skid off the surface with some extra zip.

This is most noticeable in one of the key attacking and counter-attacking shots in the grass court artillery: the slice. A shot that is naturally low bouncing, it slips and skids through a grass court and, played in the right hands, can almost die away as it lands.

Indeed slice, so often regarded as a defensive...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Tennis

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