In the past 25 years or so, tennis has grown more homogenized. Gone are the days of serve-and-volley maestros such as Boris Becker, Martina Navratilova and Pete Sampras, all of whom won multiple Wimbledon titles with games based around rocketing serves then rushing the net before their opponent had time to react.
“The majority of play in today’s era is lateral tennis on the baseline,” said Paul Annacone, a Tennis Channel analyst and coach who worked with Roger Federer and Sampras. Though differences among the surfaces are still significant, the gap between the lightning-quick speed of a grass court, the plodding, slow pace of red clay and the middle-ground hard court has inched closer together over the years.
But grass is still fastest. Thank friction — or a lack thereof — for that.
Sleek little blades of grass do little to slow a tennis ball as it strikes the court, which means the ball bounces low and flat, and points tend to be quicker. That’s why serve-and-volley tennis reigned at Wimbledon for so long, and even today, grass rewards big, bold serves. The tournament routinely sees more aces than any other Grand Slam. The faster and drier it is outside, the more compact the soil beneath the grass, and the faster the ball flies.
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As for player movement, well, here’s where all those squats and lunges pay dividends. Footing can be tricky because grass can get slippery, but once players find their balance, grass demands explosiveness.
“Your glutes and your thighs and your hamstrings really feel it when you get on the grass,” Annacone said. “You tend to be a lot lower to the ground, and it’s more of a powerful, explosive movement than the long, gliding movement that you have on a clay court.”
