I've sometimes been thinking about if clay in summer and indoors in winter is the reason why Central Europe usually produces good all-round players like Fed, Haas, Kohli, Stan, etc. The majority of Spaniards/Argentinians from clay are grinders and Americans from HCs are big-serving ballbashers.
Central European players learn offensive tennis indoors but they also need to be able for longer point construction on clay. That's why they have more variety in their game.
Not to mention that vast majority of tournaments they will ever play are not going to be on grass... even if they had the money it wouldn't make much sense in today's game
Imagine coaching sessions being conducted on grass. After a week the grass would be in complete tatters. The vast majority of grass court clubs in the UK are very expensive. Even most indoor courts are considerably too much for your keen tennis player who enjoys playing 5 times per week for more than 2 hours at a time. That's one of the primary reasons amateur tennis players in the UK are from a certain demographic and there's not enough interest in playing.
There are plenty of crappy acrylic courts around the UK. Playing on them is quite similar to grass. Having lived in England, I have to say I have never seen so many flat hitting old schoolers anywhere else.
There are plenty of crappy acrylic courts around the UK. Playing on them is quite similar to grass. Having lived in England, I have to say I have never seen so many flat hitting old schoolers anywhere else.
Do you not feel there's a correlation between the success British player's have on grass and the fact roughly 80% of clubs in the UK have atleast 2 "astroturf" courts. These fake grass courts are actually faster than the wimbledon ones, so I've heard, not extremely faster but relatively.
Go and check the grasscourt challenger results this year, British player's with pisspoor rankings, we're talking 500+ here are upsetting regular challenger level players in qualification rounds for these grasscourt tournaments or in first and second rounds.
Dan Evans beating Jarko Nieminen at queens and then giving Del Potro a decent game. Kyle Edmund only being edged out 7-6, 7-6 by Giles Simon. There's a few others, David Rice and co etc.
Fake grass is fairly easy to maintain, claycourts are harder. Trust me. It also gives off a traditional feel, relates to wimbledon and is good for playing doubles socially. So the old folk love it as they don't have to endure the balls coming back from their vollies quite as much. Oh and the lowness of the bounce means they're bending their knees often.
If we're talking about the solid academies, obviously they have good claycourts and hardcourts as well, the one I went to had a vast variety but we were more encouraged to play on the slower surfaces as this was during the transitional period of fast to slow courts.
I play in a club which has 18 clay courts (four of them indoors) and 4 hard courts (outdoors), so it's mostly clay. Although before I used to play in a smaller club which only had 4 courts and they were all grass.
Grass courts in minority over here in Aus as well. Which sucked, because I played best on grass. Mainly hard court, especially for training young players.
That said, Australia is one of the few countries most likely to opt for grass surface in a Davis Cup tie. And our players still do relatively well on the surface.
When I coached for a particular name brand company a few years ago, I worked with a girl from North Ireland who said most of the courts from her area were grass or artificial grass. Idk if this is consistent across the region or specific to where she trains, but yeah.
Australia has quite a few qartificial grass facilities
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