Are tennis courts getting slower?

Are tennis courts getting slower to suit the top male players in the modern game?

Alexander Zverev seems to think so.

“I hate when [court speeds are] the same. And I know that the tournament directors are going towards that direction because obviously they want Jannik (Sinner) and Carlos (Alcaraz) to do well every tournament,” he said after surviving a major scare at the Shanghai Masters against Frenchman, Valentin Royer.

“We always had different surfaces; you couldn’t play the same tennis the same way on a grass court, hard court and a clay court.

“Nowadays, you can play almost the same way on every surface.”

Australia’s own Alex de Minaur agreed with Zverev.

“It feels close to the slowest conditions I’ve played on tour,” he told The First Serve following his victory over Camilo Ugo Carabelli on Shanghai’s Centre Court.

“The balls get humongous after a couple of games, and the speed of the court is very, very slow. It’s also significantly slower than the outside courts. That was a little bit of a shock to the system.”

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According to the updated Court Pace Index (CPI), Shanghai sits at 32.8 compared to 42.4 in 2024, which is a significant drop off.

For context, anything considered a medium-slow to slow court would be under 34, whereas a medium-fast court to fast court is above 40 on the CPI. 

This recent debate regarding the pace of the courts seems to have been ignited by the great Roger Federer, following his guest appearance on Andy Roddick’s Served podcast during the Laver Cup. 

When asked whether there was a need to correct court surfaces to accommodate different elements of the game, he answered with a resounding “yes”.

“It’s because the tournament directors have allowed, with the ball speed and the court speed, that every week is basically the same. And that’s why you can just go from winning, I don’t know, French, Wimbledon, US Open, and just play the same way,” Federer explained.

“Obviously, I understand the safety net that the tournament directors see in making the surface slower. It’s for the weaker player; he has to hit extra amazing shots to beat Sinner. Whereas if it’s quick, he can only maybe blast a few, and, at the right time, he gets past.

“So that’s what the tournament directors are thinking. Like, ‘I kind of like Sinner-Alcaraz in the finals,’ you know? It kind of works for the game.

“Back in the day, only 12 tournaments counted, so everybody would play on their favourite surface,” Federer continued. “And then they would sometimes meet, and those were the best matches when you had the attacker against a retriever. And now everyone plays similar.

“That’s why we, the tournament directors, need to fix it. We need to have not only fast courts, but what we would want to see is Alcaraz or Sinner figure it out on lightning fast. And then have the same match on super slow and see how that matches up.”

Where Federer makes a good point is that it now seems easier to go from Roland-Garros to Wimbledon to the US Open, playing a similar game style and having repeated success.

Sinner and Alcaraz have proved this to be the case, with both men facing off at the Roland-Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open finals this year. 

30 years ago, this simply didn’t happen.

To explore the reasons why, we first have to analyse the climate of tennis in the 1990s.

At that time, Pete Sampras dominated on grass and the faster hard courts but struggled on clay, only winning three clay court titles out of his 64 ATP titles. Similarly, Stefan Edberg, Boris Becker and Goran Ivanišević all thrived on the faster surfaces. A large reason for this was that these players were all exponents of the serve-volley game, which suited the fast courts.

But you still had a strong baseline contingency in Andre Agassi and Michael Chang and clay court specialists like Sergi Bruguera and Gustavo Kuerten, who had success on the slower surfaces, keeping the tour interesting in the 90s.

Then you reach 1998, which seems to be the tipping point for tennis. 

In the Wimbledon final that year between Sampras and Ivanisevic, 85 per cent of the rallies ended in less than three shots. Even in the all-Aussie final at Flushing Meadows between Pat Rafter and Mark Philippoussis, 78 per cent of rallies were over in less than three shots. 

While serve-volley purists will look back on that era fondly, not everyone liked it. At the time, fans started to complain that the shorter rallies were ruining tennis as a spectacle. They started preferring the longer, more gruelling battles on the clay courts.

So in 2001, Wimbledon responded by slowing down its grass courts, setting a precedent which continues today.

Planting a new type of grass that was 100 per cent rye, the new lawn allowed Wimbledon’s groundsmen to keep the soil drier and firmer, meaning that the balls began to bounce higher. 

Then, in 2002, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) introduced new ‘Type 3’ balls for grass competition. The balls were 6.5 per cent wider, meaning that they moved more slowly due to increased air resistance.

The modern grass tennis court, thanks to ryegrass and improved maintenance, played flatter and more reliably, somewhat resembling hard courts in pace and bounce.

In 2003, the US Open followed suit by adding extra sand and paint to their courts at Flushing Meadows, with tournament director Jim Curley stating at the time: “We’re trying to come up with a fair field of play for the integrity of the competition.”

When the Australian Open replaced hard courts from Rebound Ace to Plexicushion in 2008, Federer was immediately critical of them. 

“I think the surface is a little bit too slow,” he said at the time. “Everything is already slowing down. Everybody’s already complaining that we’re playing too much from the baseline. So we’ll only see more of that here in Australia, that’s for sure.”

These changes impacted the complexion of the game immediately. 

When Lleyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian contested the 2002 Wimbledon final, it was the first time since 1978 that two baseliners had shared such a prestigious stage. Also, more tellingly, there was not a single serve and volley during the match.

Six years later, at the 2008 Wimbledon final between Federer and Rafael Nadal, a match that lasted almost five hours, only 57 per cent of the rallies lasted less than three shots.

The fact that this match has since gone down as one of the greatest in history is indicative that, in listening to the fan feedback, the tournament directors helped make tennis more exciting than ever by slowing down the courts.

From there, we’ve seen three of the greatest male players dominate our sport for the better part of 20 years, consistently having success on hard court, grass and clay. Two of them are baseline specialists (Nadal and Djokovic), while one possesses an all-court game (Federer).

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So are Zverev, de Minaur and Federer all on the money when it comes to the pace of the courts slowing down?

Up until about five years ago, the answer would’ve been a resounding yes. 

But in 2020, the US Open and Australian Open changed their court surfaces again, which actually sped up their respective courts.

Changing court suppliers from Decoturf to Laykold in March 2020, USTA operations director Danny Zausner indicated that speeding up the courts in New York was a key goal.

“We have done tests and measurements, obtaining a CPI of around 43, which makes it possible to qualify as a medium-fast track. They are between 20 and 30 per cent faster than those of last year, and that was what we were looking for with the change,” he stated.

As for the Australian Open, GreenSet Worldwide took over as court surface supplier in 2020, away from California Sports, with whom it had been since 2008. Already at 43 CPI in 2017, this made the courts even faster, reaching CPI values of up to 50, making it the fastest courts in the world. 

Several top players at the time commented on the faster Australian Open courts, including 2020 finalists Dominic Thiem and Novak Djokovic.

“It was very, very fast, probably the fastest Grand Slam I’ve played so far,” Thiem said. 

Djokovic added: “The surface has changed over the years. This is probably the quickest speed of the court that I have ever played on in Rod Laver Arena. You obviously need a big serve. If you have a big serve, it helps.”

Of course, there are other factors, such as evolving racquet technology, which have impacted the game irrevocably over the years. 

Today’s top stars also have more versatile game styles and can naturally better adapt to the different surfaces.

Overall, while grass courts can still be regarded as the fastest on tour, Federer’s assertion that the three main tennis surfaces (grass, hard court and clay) have become homogenised in recent years could be explained by improvements in player conditioning and court quality, causing tennis to enter an era dominated by baseline play.

So rather than asking if tennis courts are getting slower, perhaps the better question to ask is whether the courts are becoming more homogeneous?

The answer is, it’s difficult to say. Grand Slams tend to take the lead, while the other major ATP events largely follow suit, with some notable exceptions. 

Indoor tournaments, such as Basel, Paris and the ATP Tour Finals, have always been relatively quick. The Cincinnati Masters has also always been one of the quicker hard courts on tour.

Most clay court tournaments remain the slowest, with very little change each year.

Then there is the case of the Shanghai Masters, which dropped from a medium-fast (CPI 42.4) to a medium-slow court (CPI 32.8) this year. 

So while it’s difficult to say whether tennis courts are becoming more homogeneous to suit the top players on tour, one thing is for sure: they are constantly evolving based on fan and player feedback.

Whether those changes are to better suit the fans or the players, however, is still up for debate.

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