Chapter 1163 Clay Court Season
Blue sky, white clouds, sea, green mountains.
With just a few strokes, those fresh and clean colors burst out with rich brilliance, quietly and peacefully wandering in the emerald blue of the Mediterranean.
It's like a paradise.
Steep and rugged cliffs stand by the sea, lush olive and pine trees meander along the coastal road, ivory-white stone villages are hidden in the clean blue and green, revealing a corner half-hidden, and curling smoke from cooking adds a bit of liveliness to the quiet scene in front of you.
Ta-ta-ta.
A red motorcycle moves along the road, passing through the lush green and blue. You can feel the trajectory of the breeze without stretching out your hand.
Following the track of the motorcycle, you can see white sailboats sailing in the emerald green ocean. Yachts are neatly docked in the port, like pure white shells. You can also see people lying on the deck sunbathing.
Lazy and comfortable.
The whole world is intoxicating. When you close your eyes, you can feel the brightness and freshness of the sunshine, mixed with the fishy smell of sea water and moisture from the woods.
From one resort to another, although they are all surrounded by the ocean, you can still deeply feel the specialness of the island in front of you.
A kind of tranquility, a kind of leisure, a kind of simplicity and purity isolated from the world.
Obviously, this isn't Miami.
After the Miami Masters, it marks the end of the spring hard court season, and professional tennis officially enters the clay court season.
Under the influence of the comprehensive commercialization of professional tennis, there are more and more hard court events around the world, and correspondingly, there are fewer and fewer clay and grass courts.
The number of events is one thing, and even the schedule calendar can give us some clues.
Throughout the year, only April and May are the clay court season. The grass court season is even more pitiful, with only a short June, and the rest of the time is all hard court.
Of course, as a traditional tennis venue, clay courts still have low-level tournaments scattered throughout the year. Even in the hard court season, clay courts can be seen in challenge tournaments, hope tournaments or 250-point tournaments, but this is ultimately a minority. Judging from the official arrangements of the ATP and WTA: clay courts only have two months, while grass courts are reduced to one month.
It is also because of this that more and more players are good at hard courts and firmly occupy the top 50 seats in the world rankings, changing the trend of the sport.
but!
No one can deny that the unique styles of clay and grass events have always been an indispensable part of tennis and a necessary existence to enrich the sport. It is not just the venues, but also the playing styles, game content, confrontational situations, etc., which are all different.
A small detail shows that ATP and WTA still encourage the diversity of venues, which is also an important part of preserving the unique style of tennis:
Competition level weight.
Take ATP as an example. Throughout the year, there are four Grand Slams and nine Masters tournaments, which are the highest level top events.
There are four Grand Slams, two on hard courts, one on clay, and one on grass.
Nine Masters tournaments, six on hard courts and three on clay. Unfortunately, there is no grass court - however, ATP has been discussing the issue of adding a grass court Masters tournament and actively promoting it. Despite the difficulties, ATP has never given up and has been struggling to find a suitable city, venue and sponsor.
There are three clay court Masters tournaments, namely Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome.
In fact, the Rome Masters has been plagued by financial troubles in recent years. Due to Italy's economic difficulties, the event has never received official support, and the sponsors have not been strong enough, so that the total prize money of the Rome event has always been at the bottom among all the Masters tournaments and faced numerous difficulties.
Despite this, the ATP has been providing sponsorship through different channels and in different ways, hoping to maintain the status of the clay court Masters and ensure the diversity of tennis venues; at the same time, in just two months of the clay court season, there are three Masters tournaments and one Grand Slam, which once again proves the importance of clay.
This year will not only be the first time for Gao Wen to compete in clay and grass tournaments, officially stepping into another realm of the tennis world; it will also be the first time for Gao Wen to compete in a formal clay tournament in his career.
As mentioned before, the biggest reason for the proliferation of hard court tournaments is that the venues are simpler and cheaper to create, maintain, and upkeep. Even though hard court tournaments are more damaging to players' bodies and more likely to cause injuries, the number of hard courts is still increasing across the board.
This is the case in North America, where hard courts are ubiquitous, even in community sports centers, while clay and grass courts, which are more expensive to maintain, are very rare.
To be precise, there are indeed grass courts in North America, but they are basically private clubs and not open to the public; in addition, North America has a few clay courts -
It should be said that the green clay court is also a clay court, but it is not red clay, but green clay.
In the 1920s, Henry Alexander Robinson was a tennis court contractor in New York and the sole agent for European clay courts in the United States.
As his experience grew, he began looking for better and more economical raw material substitutes in the United States. At that time, he found a lot of green gravel waste left over from construction at a construction company in Pennsylvania. Robinson ground the waste into fine powder for experiments and made the first green clay court in Maryland in 1931.
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Initially, green clay courts were given the name of "pure" because, firstly, the color was pure and no dyeing was added; secondly, the performance was stable and balanced, the bounce of tennis balls was more regular, and the players' running and movement were smoother and freer - compared to grass.
From 1975 to 1977, the US Open used green clay courts. Among the four Grand Slams, the US Open is also the only tournament that has used three types of courts: grass, clay, and hard courts.
If the US Open still insisted on being played on green soil today, then the four Grand Slams would represent four types of tournaments.
Unfortunately, with the rise of tennis in the 1970s, countless tennis courts emerged across North America, and green courts enjoyed a brief period of glory. However, due to high maintenance costs, they were completely replaced by the rise of hard courts in the 1980s and fell into decline in the blink of an eye.
Today, green clay tennis courts are still widely available in North America, but professional tournaments in North America have almost all abandoned clay and turned to hard courts.
Currently, the only exception is Charleston.
This event, held immediately after the Miami Masters, is still one of the WTA's high-level events and still insists on using green clay courts.
In the ATP tour, Houston has switched from green clay to red clay in recent years, so there are no green clay events in the men's tournaments.
It is also because of this that when Gao Wen competed in high school and college competitions in North America, he basically all played on hard courts, and occasionally trained on green or clay courts, but he had never stood on a formal court, not even an NCAA competition. Everything was new to Gao Wen.
So, after the Miami event, before the Monte Carlo Masters, Gao Wen cleared his schedule and prepared to go to the clay court for some good training.
The destination is the small island in front of us, Mallorca.
(End of this chapter)