According to Patrick Mouratoglou Serena Williams' coach
The courts in Auckland have been re-surfaced this year with the goal to match the ones of the Australian Open's 2017. That would mean that the courts will play FASTER this year in Melbourne. It will be an advantage for the players that play flatter, are agressive baseliners or enjoy playing on faster courts because they know how to use well their opponents' pace.
At the ASB Classic, they resurfaced all the courts except practice court 5 which remained the same as last year, which means the same as the Australian Open's last year. The difference of speed is really obvious between the court 5 and all the other ones. To be totally clear, when the players use topspin, the court responds well to it and the ball bounces high, but when you play flatter, the ball takes a lot of speed.
I don't think this will help Federer at all. The AO was quicker last year also and we saw what happened. If they meet Nole will blow him off the court like last year. Raonic, Zverev, etc. etc. would all blow Federer off the court also, while Nadal and Murray would win pretty easily.
This is a desperate attempt to try to keep Federer relevant. It's the only reason. Though the AO has been getting quicker every year since 2013, so this is nothing new at all.
ATP started to lose money after Federer's sharp downfall and now they want to make Federer relevant again. Though, it's all meaningless, since Rogie is even getting outplayed by youngsters like Thiem and Sascha Zverev. Speeding up surfaces won't help.
The conditions were also insanely windy in Auckland. I'm not sure the last time I saw wind gusts like that during a tennis match - Serena had absolutely no rhythm.
During her presser she kind of shrugged off the loss and said she wasn't worried because Melbourne conditions are so much different.
Funny how historically AO was known as the slow hardcourt Slam and USO as the fast one.
The courts will be lightning quick you can be sure of that. Craig Tiley has the best slam and he's only looking to improve it further. The man just doesn't stop striving for the greatest tennis facilities.
The courts will be lightning quick you can be sure of that. Craig Tiley has the best slam and he's only looking to improve it further. The man just doesn't stop striving for the greatest tennis facilities.
They've already sped up the AO by a lot, so this is nothing new actually. Just compare the 2015-2016 AOs with the 2012 AO. There is no comparison: the 2015-2016 AOs were much faster and the tennis more powerful.
There's no reason to believe this until it actually happens. Maybe the outer courts will be faster, but Centre Court will probably be slow as molasses as usual.
In Brisbane, Rafael Nadal noted “the court is not as slow” and defending champion Milos Raonic, who will begin his defence in Brisbane today against Argentina’s Diego Schwartzman, said an increase in speed had been discussed in the locker room.
Guess we'll have to wait until AO to find out if it's true or not. Federer also said the same thing to the Swiss press re courts in Perth and expects courts to be faster at AO.
It sounds like what he's really saying is that the court takes spin and pace well.
Someone who hits the ball with a lot of spin is going to get rewarded for it. Someone who can hit through the court and hit the ball with a lot of speed is going to benefit as well.
It sounds like the playing surface is trying to not overly help one style of play or another, but be neutral, which could mean that the AO could be the most neutral of the Grand Slams in terms of speed.
Of course, Auckland, Brisbane, and Sydney are not actually Melbourne. Whatever weather has happened in Melbourne leading up will certainly affect the speed of the court and how fast the ball travels through the air.
I will agree the courts at aussie have been sped up since that 2012 6 hour nonsense.
However, brisbane and the other tournaments are not reflective of mebourne. I have seen and heard the other courts play fast and then in melbourne you can't really tell in prior years.
However, london did speed up the world tour finals so there may be a trend going who knows.
End of the day in hot sunny daytime weather the aussie courts play medium-medium fast during the day time and during the night matches from the quarters to the finals it is a medium slow court at best because of the temperature so it would take a hell of speeed up to effect those night matches where the business end of the tournament happens because all big matches in quarters through finals dont star till 7ish pm and the temp only plummets.
Bad decision, the courts are already quite fast during the day session and you can't do anything with the speed at night. They aren't going to make it properly fast, so we'll end up with almost all > M1000 outdoors hard courts playing approximately the same speed (apart from IW and Miami).
Tennis Abstract updated his stats to 2016, they're not perfect, but they at least give some basis for discussion.
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