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Okay, I promise you that in my last post, I did not throw out that line about success on clay having more to do with "personal style" than technique, or training. I'll also be the first to admit that I was hardly surprised when some of our most astute and faithful posters rose to the bait with as much vim as the brown trout here in the northeast are now rising to newly hatched mayflies. So I'm going to zero in on that subject, and some of the issues raised by my able critics and friends.
Todd and in Charge cut to the chase, as is his habit, with this comment: I want to pick up on this intriguing comment from Pete:
"The bottom-line is that doing well on clay, even the red clay of
Europe, has less to do with training and experience than with style."
Hold on -- how does this jibe with Pete's oft-touted position that
at the end of the day tennis is principally a mental game -- that the
differences in technique and stroke formation etc. at the top level are
small, and that what separates consistent winners from losers are grit,
determination, and smart mental play?
Well, Todd's question is a bit tangential, but my feeling is that even more than reinforcing my point about the priority of style, it undermines the conventional wisdom that there is some "secret" or bio-mechanical basis for playing well on clay (although certain techniques, like the ability to slide, certainly help determine proficiency on clay). Give me a mentally tough player with attributes conducive to success on clay (most importantly, the confidence, willingness and ability to suspend the impulse to the quick resolution of any given point), and I'll show you a clay-court champion.
In fact, I'll give you the name of one (although there are more) such clay court champion: perennial Roland Garros contender and two-time champion, Jim Courier.
As a product of the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy (BTW, there are plenty of Har-Tru clay courts there), he played the quintessential hard court, Bollettieri-era game - a game I've periodically described as the New World Style. The trademarks are playing from inside the court (taking the ball on the rise, if you prefer), and eschewing the conventional attack on the net in favor of gaining court position to dictate with the forehand. You can always tell the New World Style because it ignores the measured approach shot once employed by the old world serve-and-volley or even all-court player in favor of the outright winning placement or, at second-best, a placement so penetrating that even if it's returned, the next ball can easily be put away.
I think the distinction Todd's comment begs to have made is between "style" and "technique". They are two different things. Style grows out of the application of technique, and is more - or less - friendly to the different surfaces. For example, Pete Sampras's "style", which grew out of the way he chose to use his biggest weapon (the serve) simply never was friendly to clay. Andre Agassi's style, which grew out of the way he used his big forehand and wonderfully economical groundstrokes, was friendly to clay.
And one other note on the mental front: in 1998, Sampras beat clay-court expert Ramon Delgado in the quarterfinals of Atlanta, a tournament played on green Har-Tru clay. About two months later, Sampras and Delgado met again in the second round of Roland Garros. Sampras looked like a fish flopping around on the dusty clay the whole way as he lost in straight sets. The difference between green and red clay, and the difference between playing in Atlanta and Paris, certainly played some role in the dramatic reversal.
My own feeling, though, is that the key factors were the uncertainty, frustration, and confusion Sampras by that time had started to feel on red clay - and specifically at Roland Garros. That lack of comfort and confidence, especially when combined with style-based liabilities, were simply more critical issues than whether or not Pete could slide, or squeeze enough service speed out of his arm. To this day, Sampras can't figure out why he never figured out clay.
Next, Embug weighed in: I think training on red clay is important. Most Americans slide after
hitting the ball, when European players who "grew up on clay" slide to
the shot, which provides the split-second timing necessary for balance
and recovery. With newer strings and racquet technology players can
turn a clay-court encounter into a hard-court slug fest; however, the
delicate touch shots and intrinsic timing when on clay still leaves
Americans in the dust no matter how diligently they try to force a
different dynamic.
I see her point, but in all honesty, how many matches are decided by "delicate touch shots", and I don't really see how sliding into a ball calls on more "intrinsic timing" than hitting one on the run - if anything, I would say it calls for less, simply because a player sliding to a shot is relatively still. This suggests an important and counter-intuitive point: for all the long rallies and the stamina required to win on clay, the champions on faster surfaces may bring superior athletic qualities to the game for two related reasons: the game is faster, which always makes it harder, and more balls have to be hit while on the run.
Why is Rafael Nadal so much better on fast courts than was his fellow red-clay icon, Guillermo Vilas? Because Nasdal is twice the athlete. And note that as good as Vilas was on clay, record-wise, he only won at Roland Garros once and never came within shouting distance of a Wimbledon final. Sold clay-court technique, which is based on repetition and stroke consistency simply isn't at the apex of the champion's pyramid.
This, from Slice 'n Dice, responding to Embug: Kudos for saying it perfectly. It's all about the feet on the clay.
Movement, balance, and sliding are crucial to being able to compete on
it, and as you pointed out, the best clay court players slide "to"
strike the ball, as opposed to sliding "after" striking the ball.
Slice knows his stuff, and if we limit the discussion to technque and bio-mechanics, I agree with him up to a point - the point where I read the most irritating word in the clay-court lexicon: sliding. I've had it up to here with sliding. I hate the very idea of sliding any more, because it's such an overrated aspect of the clay-court game. Sliding is useful, but at some point it becomes the equivalent of fishtailing out of turn three (for you legions of NASCAR fans out there. . .). It becomes counter-productive - an extraneous, show-offy, silly flourish.
Richard Gasquet ought to be a big slider. Emilio Sanchez was a big slider. The dude would go sailing halfway across the red clay of the Court Centrale like freakin' Kristi Yamaguchi, chest all puffed out, chin thrust forward, looking for all the world like the figurehead on the prow of the lead ship in the Spanish armada. But does it ever occur to anyone intoxicated by the Parisian (as opposed to the Cuban) Slide that the technique is a stop-start action that inherently takes too much of the one thing that is usually in already short supply for a tennis player in a tough match - time?
Everyone who plays for a reasonable stretch of time on clay ends up sliding; it's a natural reaction, not the tennis eqivalent of a triple-toe-loop (or whatever the hail it is), which is why it's so easily abused and turned into a parlor trick. If you divided clay-court players into sliders and non-sliders (meaning those who seem to rely on the technique as an intrinsic part of their clay-court physical vocabulary, rather than something they do as the situation demands), I'll take the non-sliders any day.
I think the best non-slider on the tour today is Rafael Nadal (let's all watch him closely next time to see just how much sliding he really does; maybe I'll change my mind). Almost all the successful American players (on clay) were non-sliders, including Jimmy Connors. Ivan Lendl, Mr. All Business, wasn't a big slider, either.
Skip 1515 weighed in with this comment:
The issue of movement on red clay is surely one that affects the
American men, but to my mind the real issue is what Robin's called shot
tolerance: the ability to withstand the pressure (boredom?) of multiple
20 ball rallies. Someone like Roddick can play well enough for 4
matches that this doesn't become an issue, but faced with 7 matches
against players who live on a diet of patience pills eventually catches
up with you if you aren't equally committed to running a marathon every
point.
I agree with Skip here, and a hat tip to Robin for that wonderful term, "shot tolerance." This is style, along with a healthy dose of mental toughness, really come into play. The most successful gringo clay-court players always had shot tolerance no matter how what surface they played on. They had the tools, as well as the mentality, to avoid being unnerved or discouraged by the doomsday stroking machines who enjoy their moment in the sun during the clay-court season.
In fact, I'd say that the major issue for creative players who aspire to win Roland Garros (first and foremost, Roger Federer) is having the confidence, patience, and will to survive long enough to challenge the very best players on clay. One thing that really is different in the clay game is that, to borrow an analogy from boxing, you not only have to fight the feature bout, you're more likely to have to fight all the guys on the undercard, too. Clay-court tennis is a great leveler, on which every potential weakness will be probed.
This brings us right up hard against an irony: putting too much emphasis on technique devalues the great distinction and most profound value of the clay-court game, because it suggests that having the magic bullet, technique-wise, is the key to winning on clay. If Bjorn Borg won Roland Garros almost in his sleep, almost every year he played, was it because he had superior clay-court technique? And if so, did he also have the technical magic bullet for winning on grass, which has such different demands? And if so, how could one player have both, and if he did, can there be such a radical difference between them? What was Borg, the greatest clay-court player of the Open era, or the greatest grass-court player of the Open era?
Bjorn Borg is the ultimate proof that technique is the most wildly overrated aspect of success in tennis.
Fleaman wrote:
Sliding or not, I still think it would be worth for someone like
Roddick to actually play the entire Euro clay court season. Running
around and playing tennis on clay is not that hard and definitely not
impossible to learn, so by the time RG rolls around a top-10 hard court
player with 4-5 weeks of Euro clay under his belt/shoes should be able
to win a few rounds, maybe even get into the second week. Since there
aren't any points to defend but many to gain, especially Roddick could
benefit from this strategy as those points might get him to number 5 or
even 4 in the world,which would come in real handy when trying to avoid the Federer quarter
of the draw at Wimbledon and the USO later in the season. . .
I find this comment simple but germane. I was there when Roddick first played Roland Garros (2001). He hammered serve-and-volley expert Scott Draper in straight sets, toughed out a high-quality five-set win over former French Open champion Michael Chang, and he was giving as good as he got against Lleyton Hewitt when he had to retire with a foot injury (they were at 2-2 in the third set, after having split the first two). Watching Roddick that day, I thought he could do well on clay.
Wait! What about that backhand? What about the movement?
The answers are interrelated: players who aren't quite as athletic as some of their peers do well on clay (hence all those "clay-court experts") because clay gives them a little more of that precious commodity, time - time to draw a bead, which is critical to being able to dictate with the forehand. Roddick at the time had boundless energy, a zeal for competition even on red clay, and a powerful enough serve to employ his nuclear forehand almost at will. A lot may have changed since then, but Roddick's serve and forehand have not.
I'll leave the last word to Rolo Tomasssi:
Of course there are differences between playing on hard courts and clay
courts, but are they as vast as the discrepancy between American
success elsewhere and on clay? Of course, tennis being tennis, the fact
is that if our players believe they can't win on clay, then the truth
of the matter is that they won't, so perhaps it's a moot point, but I
do wonder....
hear, hear! And here we are, back at the starting point of a discussion that is less about American players than about what it really takes to perform well on clay.
In his final comment on my last post, Todd wrote: My contention is the following: that in today's modern game, you are
better served learning the fundamentals on red clay -- preferably in
Spain or maybe South America, where you can then adjust your game and
play acceptably on all surfaces. Americans learning on practice courts
here in the States, even at places like Bradenton, wind up for the most
part with Tommy Haas-like results on most surfaces, hard courts being
their strength, red dirt being a major deficit, Wimby being somewhat
neutral.
It's a valid point - if you agree with the premise. But then, how come the rankings aren't dominated by Spanish or South American players, or those who trained there? I think it's because even if you develop your game on clay, personal style eventually trumps all. That's why Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker became attacking players, despite having been raised on clay, and that's why Roger Federer plays so differently from Rafael Nadal, despite also spending his formative years on similar red dirt.
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