Another piece about clay court tennis. Still paying off that karmic debt.
Until this year, if you'd asked me one word to describe clay court tennis, I probably would have said, "Boring."
But this year, as I watched matches from the whole clay court season on into Roland Garros, it no longer seemed boring. Just different. I noticed how far back players stand in relation to the baseline, better able to deal with the high bounce of a deep, heavy top-spin ball. Playing deeper from the baseline narrows the potential angles of a player's shot, meaning that clay court tennis is more of a straight-through-the-court style than the sharp angles seen on grass or even hard courts. Also, the players' distance from the net amplifies the importance of the drop shot.
This is all very interesting. So why did clay court tennis seem boring? I must have been failing to see its particular beauty, I thought.
But then it occurred to me that there was a fallacy in my thinking, namely, that the way it is now is the way it has always been. I had to remember that when I was watching tennis as a kid, we were just a handful of years past the wooden racquet era. The game didn't have nearly the power and pace that it does now. As much as the modern clay court game demands consistency, it's entirely possible that the clay court matches I watched back then really were boring--endless rallies in which winners were impossible, making the game more about fitness than shotmaking. Is it any wonder that I preferred the rapier slashes of grass court tennis?