MASON, Ohio \u2014 When it comes to hard court tennis, summer weather is a game changer. From high temperatures, humidity, wind and rain, the impact of weather can be the difference between winning or losing.<\/p>\n
For instance, at 85 degrees, the court can heat up to over 110 degrees. That makes the ball bounce higher and move faster, favoring hitters and aggressive players.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile high humidity means the air is thicker. That slows the ball in flight and can take some bounce off the court, leading to longer rallies and more fatigue.<\/p>\n
Just a sprinkle of rain is enough to stop play. Hard courts become slippery fast, and wet tennis balls bounce lower and move slower.<\/p>\n
Wind can throw off the ball toss and serves. Players must adjust quickly. Staying patient and using more topspin gives them more margin for error.<\/p>\n
Yet high risk flat hitting can backfire with less margin for error unless the timing is perfect.<\/p>\n
And players aren’t the only ones adjusting.<\/p>\n
Cincinnati’s unpredictable weather has stringers constantly tweaking to keep the players at the top of their game. Every change in temperature or humidity changes how the racket feels.<\/p>\n
In general, the hotter the temperature, the tighter the strings need to be.<\/p>\n
With 38 years’ experience, Nate Ferguson says this type of customization is something the pros rely on sometimes in the middle of a match.<\/p>\n
“When it’s 93 degrees outside and 99% humidity, they feel the softness in the strings that needs to be compensated for by adding a higher tension to their rackets,” Ferguson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MASON, Ohio \u2014 When it comes to hard court tennis, summer weather is a game changer. From high…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70817,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":{"0":"post-70816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}