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Tennis is dead
By Ru-an Zietsmann
After Roger Federer's loss in the Australian Open final to Rafeal Nadal I felt that something was not right and I was asking myself a lot of questions. How does a clay court specialist like Nadal manage to dominate one of the best offensive players of all time like Federer? How can he beat Federer on grass and now hard court in grand slam finals? Somewhere something was very wrong. It suddenly dawned upon me that the speed of the grass courts at Wimbledon has everything to do with this. The grass at Wimbledon was always fast and the ball stayed low, therefor making it a paradise for the big servers and serve-and-volley players. The fact that a clay court specialist like Nadal can win Wimbledon now is just cause for serious investigation. The grass has been significantly slowed down, not giving any advantage to big servers and serve-and-volley players anymore. You might say but that's the way it should be, but you would be wrong. At the Fench Open that is played on clay the clay court specialists still have a distinct advantage over there opponents. If you serve and volley on clay it still doesn't do you much good. The other surface of tennis is of course hard court. Hard court is supposed to be the middle ground where both the grass court specialists and the clay court specialists have a chance to do well, but these days some hard courts is even faster then grass. This has caused an imbalance in tennis. The baseline players have once again started to dominate tennis. The classic serve and volley players is all but history. This is made clear by how Nadal, a clay court specialist, has recently dominated the game. He has now won a grand slams on all surfaces, something that would never have happened did Wimbledon not decide to make their courts slower. But not only did they assist an ugly baseline game to dominate tennis, they also dealt maybe the greatest player of all time a severe blow. I'm talking about Roge rFederer of course. Was it not for the slowing down of grass Federer would now have already broken Sampras' all time slam record. He would have won Wimbledon last year as well as this year's Australian Open. The only reason Nadal beat him at the Australian Open is that he got so much confidence from beating Federer at Wimbledon last year. As someone who likes Federer a lot and appreciates what an awesome player he is this state of tennis does not sit well with me. I'm not trying to take anything away from Nadal, he totally deserves everything he has achieved in tennis. But I can't help but feel like tennis is dead. There is an imbalance in the game and the beauty of the serve-and-volley game is a thing of the past. Now it's about who can grind out the other player from the base line and there is nothing beautiful and elegant about it. I think it's time for tennis and specifically Wimbledon to wake up and make the grass fast again. After all Wimbledon is the home of tennis and they should care enough to make this change. This will make the Nadal/Federer rivalry interesting again and restore tennis as one of te most popular sports in the world. |
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This intel was contributed by Ru-an
Ru-an
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May, 2012
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