Wimbledon used to be about lunging volleys, the chipped approach and the overwhelming dominance of the serve and volley proponents.
Wimbledon has changed fundamentally to favour the back-court players
NEW DELHI: Wimbledon used to be about lunging volleys, the chipped approach and the overwhelming dominance of the serve and volley proponents. It was also about bad bounces and the ball sliding on the moist surface when the covers would come off after a rain break.
The 2008 Championships had little of that and the epic final epitomised the preponderance of brute power from the baseline. The grass at SW19 no longer gives those charging the net a high; it instead offers a truer, higher bounce for the return to be smacked hard off the space-age tech racquets now wielded by the pros.
“It’s a softer ball now which sits up. Earlier the ball would slide but now the grass actually checks the bounce. That makes it tougher for the volleyer. If a player with the net skills of Roger Federer refuses to follow his serve up, then you know the surface does not allow it anymore,” says Leander Paes.
While the authorities have persistently denied there has been any perceivable difference in the speed of the surface, players who have seen the transition during their playing years are quite clear that this is a slower surface which offers a much higher and truer bounce.
After years of experimenting to move Wimbledon beyond the unidimensional dominance of the big server, in 2001 the erstwhile 70:30 mixture of two types of grass was abandoned. The Championships shifted to 100% perennial ryegrass doing away with the 30% of red fescue variety. The blades are grown to a uniform length of 8mm which seems to contribute to slowing down the game.
“The grass is also grown differently now and the blades actually check the ball much more. All the courts at Wimbledon have slowed down,” agrees Mahesh Bhupathi.
Already in 1995 ball pressure was reduced, allowing more time for the return of serve. “The balls don’t skid as much anymore and they are heavier,” says Bhupathi.
“There seems to be more felt on them now as it’s tougher to put them away as compared to before. The moment they made them softer, they made it better for baseliners,” adds Paes. “The harder ball moved faster but it also made big serves virtually unplayable.”
Another significant change introduced on the centre court in 1998 was the use of a new rain cover that allows for better light and enhanced ventilation with the use of four fans underneath. This in turn ensures the surface stays hard and dry. “Earlier there would be some moisture that would make the chip slide off. Doesn’t happen anymore,” Paes explains the impact of the new covers. A harder sub-surface also makes the ball bound higher.
From a time when baseliners would regularly choose to skip the outing on grass to now when they are giving even big servers a torrid time — Janko Tipsarevic’s win over Andy Roddick being a case in point — Wimbledon has changed itself to appeal to the new generation of tennis player.
“Nadal is a great player. But if Wimbledon would have been the same surface as it was in the early nineties, the scoreline for this year’s final may well have been a repeat of the French. Only that it would have been Federer dominating overwhelmingly,” is Paes’ assertion to illustrate just how much The Championships have morphed over the years.
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