As the clay season gets truly underway in Monte Carlo this week, all are reminded of what tennis on ‘hard’ mode is like; Wimbledon may still be the crown jewel of the season, but as to where such modern-day jewels are made, “all are from dust.”
Novak Djokovic, the defending French Open (and Wimbledon) champion, is making his return to the tour after missing the Sunshine Double. At the start of last year’s clay season, Djokovic explained the challenges of clay1 (emphasis added):
“I think clay requires a lot of adjustments, the ball bounces irregularly. It’s quite unpredictable at times. “If the courts are not in a perfect state — which is normal if you have rain, wind, different conditions that can affect the condition of the court — then obviously mentally you just have to stay out there…I will use this term ‘grind’ [for what you have to do] mentally and physically more than any other surface…It can be very frustrating at times, because sometimes you just feel like maybe you can’t make a winner, you can’t make an easy point with your serve like you usually do on the other surfaces…It requires a tactical and definitely technical adjustment. The positioning on the court has to vary all the time. It’s a very strategic surface that requires a lot of strategic thinking and tactical adjustment.”
Despite growing up predominantly on clay as a junior, Djokovic prefers hard and grass courts for his flatter style of hitting. However, this hasn’t stopped him from compiling one of the most impressive clay-court resumes in history, one that would have certainly been padded with more Roland Garros titles if it weren’t for Rafael Nadal’s obscene ability on the surface. In fact, a heavy dose of clay tennis in their youth hasn’t stopped any of the Big-4 members from compiling impressive grand slam results across the surfaces.2
Twenty years ago, on the eve of the 2002 clay court season, a young Roger Federer echoed similar sentiments3:
"I play better on grass than clay, that's for sure. Even though I grew up on clay and played on it the whole time, also during winter in a balloon…On big points on clay, you can see your game's weakness and make that evident to your rival. On grass, it's two shots, and sometimes you can be lucky as well; you never know in such a short rally…On clay, you have to work hard to earn the point.”
Prior to the 2000s, tennis was a game of seasons: hard, clay, and grass. There were tangible differences in the styles and tactics that could excel on slower and faster surfaces. Despite being the dominant player of the 90s, Pete Sampras never made a final at Roland Garros, and Sergi Bruguera—twice a winner at Roland Garros in 1993 and 1994—barely made the trip to Wimbledon throughout his career. This wasn’t uncommon for clay courters, who had to adjust to uneven bounces and a faster, nastier grass court than is used today.
Sergi Bruguera’s grand slam appearances and results. The futility of Wimbledon was felt by many clay courters in this era.
Agassi managed to win all four slams during the 90s, and came within one match of acheiving the Channel Slam in 1999, a feat that is remarkable in the context of how varied the game was then; there was true surface and style variation. For a visual indication of why no player achieved the Channel Slam during most of the 80s (Borg did it three times in a row from 1978-1980 just before racquet tech took off) look no further than the graph below from Martin Ingram. We can see the influence powerful racquet technology (in the form of lighter metal materials, bigger head sizes) had on rally length circa 1982 onwards
The steep decline of clay in the early 80s coincides with the demise of the wooden racquet. In 1981 Borg won his fifth and final french open with a wooden Donnay. The next year, a young Mats Wilander won with a wider, metallic Rossignol. Graph and data From Martin Ingram (@xenophar) on twitter.
If you cast your eyes back to the rally length graph, you can see the uptick in grass rally length coinciding with a change to 100% rye grass in 2001, which made the bounce more even and overall a bit higher. Almost overnight, Wimbledon became another baseliners paradise. By the time Roger Federer started to dominate the entire calendar in 2004, surface homogenisation was as close as it had ever been and it has stayed that way ever since.4 Suddenly, making the final of both Roland Garros and Wimbledon the same year was no longer an exceptional achievement, but the rule; since 2006 it has happened 9 times, with Federer (2009), Nadal (2008, 2010), and Djokovic (2021) all winning the Channel Slam.
While these changes were a boon to Europeans and clay court reared players, it has been tough going for anyone who learned the game on a hard court. No American man has won a slam since Roddick in 2003, and no Australian man has made a final since Hewitt’s 2005 Australian Open run. And it’s not just the top dogs that are skewing the data, a quick look at the geographical breakdown of the top 100 shows that Europeans dominate every cohort of the rankings:
I’ve written previously about ‘desirable difficulties’ and the benefits they confer to the learner:
It describes learning tasks that require a considerable amount of effort that tend to slow down learning in the short term but provide greater long-term benefits.
Contextual interference involves mixing up your practice structure, either by adding different tasks and/or adding practice variability when learning a skill…The ‘interference’ refers to the (usually) worse practice performance of the skill during the random practice structure, but a greater ability to retain and perform the skill later on.
In the context of modern day baseline tennis, clay courts are the benchmark for desirable difficulties and contextual interference. You’ll get more tired, and probably more frustrated, and in the end, be better for it.
This is not exactly a revolutionary secret; the US and Australian tennis bodies have acknowledged that clay court tennis helps a player develop for the modern day game, and some clay courts have been installed at national training facilities in both countries. Yet, no champion has emerged. Maybe it will take more time, but plenty of young talent in the last ten years has still mainly come from Europe: Zverev, Tsitsipas, Berrettini, Ruud, Rublev, Alcaraz, and Sinner to name a few. Two young Canadians in Felix Auger Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov seem to show promise, but there credentials so far are heavily skewed to fast hard courts and grass, and in my opinion, their games are lacking in the areas clay would have developed: return of serve, angles, defence, drop shots—the kind of tennis IQ everyone has been drooling about from 18-year-old Spaniard, Carlos Alcaraz, in recent weeks.
While training on clay is helpful, playing on clay is better. Matches are the ultimate practice; nothing else comes close. If we take a look at the lower level Challenger and Futures tournaments (the breeding ground of the next and upcoming players) we see that Europe’s clay and hard court offering is far more balanced, and skewed in favour of clay, on top of simply having more events.5
Futures tournaments, the lowest rung of pro tournaments, are not much different:
While there is a strong generation of young Americans coming through (Brooksby, Korda, Opelka, Fritz, Paul, Tiafoe, Cressy, and Nakashima) it remains to be seen if they can excel on clay and develop the skills and court craft necessary to occupy the very top of the rankings. Much of the calendar is played on hard courts (2 grand slams, and 6 of 9 Masters 1000s) yet no American or Australian has been able to consistently entrench themselves in the top-10 since Andy Roddick over a decade ago.
It shouldn’t be too hard to understand. Famed investor Charlie Munger has a famous quote:
“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”
Hard courts incentivise big serving and big hitting. It encourages risk-taking and rewards power. What we typically see from young Americans, Canadians, and Aussies, are big servers and hitters (or, if smaller, flat hitters) with a lack of shot tolerance and defensive/return abilities. This trend hasn’t changed despite implementing clay courts into national academies. Perhaps those first formative years are important and should be played on clay—something that is hard to do unless you are in the national academy system from a very young age. Or perhaps for all the training on clay players do, what you really need are lots of competitive clay court matches.
For all the money USTA and Tennis Australia pour into player development—new facilities, coaching resources, strength and conditioning programs etc.—they have done very little to grow the number of clay court events played at home, especially in the lower professional ranks.
At the foundation of a successful nation in modern tennis, I’m inclined to put two factors ahead of everything else:
Juniors learn the game on clay.
Access to plenty of clay and hard court tournaments (or within reasonable travel).
Countries that fit this bill: Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. Together, these four countries represent 28% of the current top-100. I think Europe will continue to dominate the game until other continents start making an effort to host more clay events in their region.
The return rating is determined by adding the win-percentage from four statistical categories: % of break points converted, % of first-serve return points won, % of second-serve return points won, and % of return games won. vs top-20 opponents only.
As per the ATP site: “The Serve Rating adds four service metrics percentages plus the average number of aces per match and subtracts the average number of double faults per match.” *vs top-20 opponents only.
Great post. I always wondered why there weren't more Americans in the top 100 and this is a great analysis on it.