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Roger has suggested speeding the courts up more than once. Is he right? Are tournament directors guilty of 'fixing' court speeds to suit the current box office players, Sinner and Alcaraz? Can we go back to fast courts in today's super fast game? Would there even be a rally? Adjusting court speeds would require a degree of fine tuning so things don't swing the other way.
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Stotty -
A lot of the online discussion has hyped this as if Fed was going after Jannik and Carlos, which is not true. Fed was talking about the latest iteration of a long-term trend, one that he's bemoaned for years. And, specifically, whether the Laver Cup, which he founded, should "take some of the sand out of its court" because of playing conditions in SF.
Fed's main point was that variety is good for tennis, the sport. Which I agree with.
Are events rigged to make it more likely that the top players make the final weekend. Of course, they are; what else are "seedings" but a system to reduce the likelihood of big names losing early?
As for "speeding up the courts", most of the recent ridicule is aimed at the "new" tennis balls introduced after supply changes during Covid. It's the overall "playing conditions" not just the courts -- although the switch of Shanghai from the last great holdout to very slow surface this year, momentarily took the focus.
Great article in The Telegraph this week goes into the softer, faster fluffing up new balls -- reveals that mid match Medvedev didn't just switch string tension, he asked for totally different strings, switching from hybrid to all poly mid-game !!! I can't even ...
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