Answer- Andy Roddick. Honest.

Good on Andy! :-)

Andy the King of clay. Didn't he start on this surface?

His coach Tarik Benhabiles showed him how to play on clay.

As I said in a comment a day or so ago, I was so impressed with Odesnik's performance in 75% of his Houston semi-final match (as well as Blake's play) that I was beginning to have dreams, not only of an All-American clay final in Houston, but also of having 3 Americans (I added Roddick) go beyond Week 1 of RG.

Yea, I guess that was reckless dreaming. :) But, even though the US guys haven't signed on to MC, I'm still hoping for a better American RG performance this year than we had last year. Don't ask me why.

Not surprised that Roddick has won 5 titles and has a 64-31 record on clay but I was just curious on the breakdown of that record like Davis Cup matches, Houston matches, other US clay matches, Masters Series and Grand Slam matches, and other non-US clay events.

I, too, am curious to know if any of Andy's clay-court titles were on red clay. I understand that North American red clay is far different than the crushed red brick of Europe, but still I seem to recall that Andy has won at least once on the red/orange stuff.

Slice-n-Dice, Andy's 2005 Houston title was on red clay (I am looking at pictures from the event). Westside tore up the old red clay (which was shipped in from Paris and was for all intents and purposes European clay) and put in Green Har-Tru for the 2007 event, but that was the last time it was held there. This year's tournament, held at River Oaks CC, was also played on red clay.

pete, the Houston tournament was on red clay.

Thanks, Jenni!!! I THOUGHT he had one one on the red clay. To hear that it was essentially the European variety makes it that much sweeter. So maybe the U.S. Davis Cup team has a fighting chance when they take on the Spanish team in Spain, after all! (The Bryan's won Roland Garros in 2003.)

Jenni: Your post reminded me that Houston had the "authentic" red clay for a while. It also made me smile because I remembered that Mattress Mac (the wonderful character and tennis supporter who owned Westside) was quite funny when he described the guys that he'd brought over to lay down the "real thing" at his club.

Last night (or the night before), I watched Andre come back from two sets down to beat Andrei Medvedev to win the French. I had never seen that match before. Andrei was a real sportsman. I wonder where his career went after that match. Anybody?

I'll answer my own question:

**Andriy Medvedev (born August 31, 1974 in Kyiv) is a retired professional tennis player from Ukraine. Medvedev made a splash on the international tennis scene when he was but a mere teenager, picking up titles in Genoa and Stuttgart at age seventeen. His most successful tournament was the Hamburg Masters (formerly the German Open), which he won on three occasions.

In the late nineties, Medvedev's form and results began to flounder, so it came as a complete shock when he charged to the final of the French Open in 1999, having dismissed the likes of Pete Sampras and Gustavo Kuerten en route. His opponent in the final, Andre Agassi, had also been considered washed up by many, which led to a surprising final of two players considered past their prime.

Medvedev completely dominated the first two sets of the final, but he let his opportunity slip away and allowed Agassi to mount a come from behind victory, which granted him the coveted career Grand Slam. For Medvedev, however, this was a last hurrah and he faded into obscurity shortly afterwards, and he retired from the tour in 2001.

One main rival of Medvedev’s was Sergi Bruguera. While their head-to-head record ended deadlocked at five each, Bruguera was able to win their two most important matches—the semifinals and quarterfinals of the 1993 and 1994 French Opens.

Andriy had a great Junior career, the highlight of which was winning the juniors French Open in 1991.**

Hat-tip to Chris, I confused "green" with "european" ,although the the main points here had more to do with winning in Europe. If you take small American clay-court events out of the equation, or national record is slim pickins' indeed!

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?

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.

American singles players don't practice on red clay because they know they won't have to defend points earned on red clay. Why should Blake, Roddick, Ginepri, or Donald Young play the month's tournaments leading to RG when they assume they won't do well? I think many take this month to rest and get ready for grass and the summer hard court seasons.

Hats off to the Bryan brothers for their stellar results!

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" srike the ball, as opposed to sliding "after" striking the ball.

Ruth : "I'm still hoping for a better American RG performance this year than we had last year. Don't ask me why"

I think I know why.

Bcos it definitely cannot get any worse than last year :)

I've often wondered how much of this is a national mental issue that's been nurtured among the American players for decades ... yes, decades. I remember in Johnny Mac's book, You Cannot Be Serious, he recalled that when he first headed over to play a clay court event in Europe somebody told him that (I'm paraphrasing) "some guy you never heard of is going to kick your butt." Aren't our young players pretty much raised believing that the red stuff is some mysterious element that will nullify their abilities? 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....

embug: You hit the nail on the head regarding movement on clay. Your post actually fits in with something that Slice-n-Dice were discussing last night - attacking players that were comfortable moving on clay because they grew up on the surface (I used Edberg and Stich as examples).

Rolo Tomassi -

I think you raise a very good question. But I think the answer is simple. It's a bit like the difference between Americna Football and the Futbol/Football that is played by the rest of the world.

It has everything, and I believe everything, to do with how Americans move (or don't move) on the clay. If you cannot master the movement -- the acceleration and the sliding to the shot -- no amount of tennis stroke technique or tennis smarts will help.

I once watched Jaime Yzaga play from ground level over in Charlotte. It was uncanny how he moved on the clay (and this was the AMewrican green composition, or Har-Tru). His feet barely came off the ground, as he seemed to shuffle around rather than run. His balance was impeccable as he scurried around the surface as though he were in socks on ice. And Yzaga was not the best of movers on the surface, just a "natural" mover.

Now the game has certainly changed since Jaime's time, with the power, spin and angles being generated demanding much greater court coverage from the players. So we see them taking off in a dead sprint quite often to retrieve a ball hit to the opposite corner. But how they accelerate toward that ball, then decelarate at just the right moment as they slide into the shot, rotating their hips, torso and shoulders as they slide, then uncoil with great force at just the perfect time -- this is the art of playing on clay. And sadly, it is almost completely lost on the American players today.

Except perhaps on Andy Roddick! Go Andy! LOL!!!

personnaly i think the perception of clay changed a lot...
RG started being the hardest slam to win to the slam who can't be won...
jmac losing the heartbreak with lendl, connors never made a single final, sampras ditto, even for agassi and chang who won it once you never could say they were dominant on clay... agassi won when nobody though it was still in his hands and chang won miraculously at 17 taking out lendl and edberg... nobody saw it coming, no ?
the only américan who changed things was jim courrier and it last for 3 years before everyone disapeared on the red stuff... and started beliving it can't be done again.

i think americans never care for the french, because they had their own slam, and wimby was the other one to win...
i don't know if it's an historical shift when european choosed clay vs hard... all the big clay tourneys in europe were born on clay : rome, monte carlo, barcelona, stuttgart, gstaad, kitzbhuel nations who had no ways to train on grass choose clay vs hard
and made RG their dream slam, argentina, spain, italy, austria and after the east countries lik czeck republic, yugoslavia, the russians...
it takes a different mind set to compete on clay than on hard... it's like learning the "douceur de vivre à la française" vs the crazy new york life style !!
all players say clay teaches you patience, nobody wins RG the fast way... you can find some exceptions, but the truth is that the clay doesn't reward any of those players...
now after the post sampras-agassi era, i think the USTA was more concern on building new players who could win the US iso RG...
so having the best hc or grass players in roddick and blake, fish and others makes sense to me.

I agree with these comments regarding movement on clay. But that suggests something other than mental strength differentiates great tennis players at the top level. It then becomes a question of skill.

To further muddy that question, consider the ease with which most guys who can play well on red clay convert their games to our green hard courts. Yet "hard court" specialists struggle to make the transition to red dirt.

What explains that discrepancy?

Todd,

I'm not sure I follow you here, but I'll see if I can work through it. It sems to me there is a world of difference in going from red clay to the green composition (as its known at most facilities) and going from hard courts (and by this I take it you mean Rebound Ace, DecoTurf, etc.) to clay.

It's all in the footing and the sliding. A great hard court player may not play all that great on the composition, eiher, except that his penetrating shots are rewarded a bit more often than on the slower red clay, where patience is less a virtue than a requirement.

So, Andy and James can do well on the compoosition due to the strengts of their best shots, and in James's case his wheels, while those same best shots have far less impact on the slow red clay. If they do not learn how to move properly on the cla, the they cannot possibly recover in time to get to the amazing angles that a slower surface allows today's players to hit.

Does that make any sense? It does to me, of course, but maybe I'm making certain assumptions or failing to explain some premises.

I recall Andy Roddick losing to Andreev on last years FO, not precisely because of drop shots ...

That is to say, even though Andy is a powerful player, and he has proven he could play on clay (actually I remember him beating Coria in Houston at some point, besides his victory in the Czech Republic on davis Cup), his HEART is not on it on the normal clay season ... of course, he also lost 1st round at the USO three years ago. Some points on clay is all he would need to give himself a better chance to be a top three, though.

With Blake it is different ... I think he is too suprised to see so many shots that would be clean winners on a hard curt coming back, and he can't just keep hitting winners long enough to outlast the other guy.

"That Agassi-Courier French Open final is the only European or South American clay-court final contested by Yanks in the 28-year period, perhaps longer."

This is really quite amazing, thanks for posting.

I remember it seeming unusual at the time, but didn't quite realize how unusual it really was.

Maplesugar,

I followed that 1999 French Open and watched Medvedev easily dismiss my favorite player Kuerten. I was sad as I saw it happen, but couldn't help becoming an instant fan of Andrei's. I had never seen such and agressive return of serve on clay before, or since. To receive the second serve he'd position himself almost half way up to the service line and then actually charge at the incoming ball! Intimidating to say the least!

As to the Agassi/Medvedev final, Agassi looked totally lost during the first two and a half sets. I was shocked when two sets up and playing some of the best tennis I'd ever seen, Medvedev suddenly and for no apparent reason went away, lost the match and was never heard from again : (

Last year, when the match betting/fixing scandal with Davydenko broke out, Pete wrote a post in which, without naming names, he stated he'd seen many matches which he wouldn't be surprised if there was match fixing involved. A few of us at TW, including myself, pointed to the Agassi/Medvedev FO final as possibly being one of those matches. LOL

serena, the true wolrd number one!

so the whole of USA is on Roddick's shoulders.

blake, fish, young, querrey, are not stepping up on the plate

blake, please come back to Harvard, we welcome you to a different career.

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. In fact, by this rationale, a good clay court season might even give Roddick a better shot at the USO than training on DecoTurf for the next 6 months!

all i know is... i love watching tennis on the red stuff! RG is my favourite slam to watch of all. :)

hi pete! thanks for this article --- interesting interesting comments by your thoughtful readers (count me out please!).

A few short years ago it was atypical for a 'clay-courter' to be involved in tennis after Roland Garros.

As a clay court lover myself (my game is taken to new heights on the stuff), I've never understood why Americans haven't taken RG more seriously. If tradition is relevant in tennis, then Roland Garros is grave indeed.

It is quite surprising, even from this Roddick fan, that Andy is tied with Courier for clay court titles. So surely this should show that a high level, top pro game should translate to any surface. Why haven't Americans made the transition that the Spaniards and South Americans have?

I don't know if anybody already said this, but Houston's tournament this year was not played on traditional red clay.

Instead of crushed brick they used a limestone type surface that has more traction than the european stuff. Hence the surface played like a har-tru court, despite the color.

I felt like that was important to the conversation about surfaces.

American men, that is. American women seem to have no problem.

Once on top, there is no other way but down.

This applies to Federer on grass, Nadal on clay.

Bell's curve in statistics: inevitable, inescapable fact of life.

Roland Garros is for Djokovic, Tsonga, Murray and Roddick

"It is quite surprising, even from this Roddick fan, that Andy is tied with Courier for clay court titles. So surely this should show that a high level, top pro game should translate to any surface."

LOL, among Courier's five clay titles are two French Opens and two Rome Masters Series tournies. So while Roddick may have won five tournaments on, ahem, "clay", he doesn't even come close to Courier's credentials on that surface.

"Courier is one of the few Open-era players to successfully defend a French Open title."

Others to do it: Nadal, Kuerten, Bruguera, Lendl, Borg, Kodes

hmm...does courier coach? maybe he should start coaching these guys how to play on clay.

i wonder how the powers that be will react if for example roger, rafa and djokovic skip indian wells and miami? it's in an odd spot in the calender anyway. australian open is done, clay court season is up next, what could two hard court tournaments do to their game when the next major is on clay?

roddick is only playiong rome and rg i believe. it's apparent he's just going through the motions. i see no belief and desire to really do well on european clay. which is a pity really. and as what someone said upthread, he can look at it as adding ranking points to maybe put himself in the 4th position and have his own quarter in wimby and the uso.

"it's apparent he's just going through the motions. i see no belief and desire to really do well "

In order for ANY player to do well on ANY "surface" they must FIRST try.

These guys must stop the excuses first. Then they need to go over there and prove they can hang with the rest instead of trying to label a big part of the field as "surface-specialists".

Good players can win.

"Roland Garros is for Djokovic, Tsonga, Murray and Roddick"

Well, one out of three ain't bad.

Tsonga will go nowhere at RG. Murray has now managed to win consecutive matches on clay for the first time in his CAREER. Roddick? Whatever.

1. When Medvedev and Agassi took the court for the French final it was damp, overcast and cold, conditions traditionally similar to the tournament where Medvedev had his greatest success: Hamburg. He was a big, strong player who could power his way through the heavy playing conditions in Hamburg. His less than stellar wheels weren't as much of a liability in that setting, either.

As the match wore on there may have been a rain delay, I can't quite remember, but what definitely happened is that the sun finally showed itself. The temperature rose, the court and balls sped up, and Agassi, who'd held on gamely, found his rhythm as the conditions changed into those in which he flourished. Meanwhile, Medvedev found his edge disappearing and wasn't able to stop Agassi.

2. Without the box scores in front of me, I wonder if Roddick's lack of success in major clay court tournaments (unlike Courier) is the result of not having to play best of 5 set matches in the titles he's won on clay.

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.

Players accustomed to shorter points, from learning on faster courts, don't have the same mentality as those who've learned on slow clay. At some point, earlier than clay court habitues, they feel the need to open up a point. If they do it successfully, repeatedly, they can succeed (see: Verkerk, or Henman). But that's a really, really tough row to hoe, and there's little chance for any performance that's less than stellar. Pull the trigger too often and you find yourself frustrated as balls that don't come back on faster courts return to make you play yet one more shot.

I also think the movement thing affects hard court players' mind set. Clay courters learn early that balls a hard courter sees as un-gettable can be chased down. Consequently they have a committed first step towards balls hard court players hesitate to run for.

Without a doubt the sliding business is part of this equation, as is the skill to not fall flat on your face with a committed first step, but more than either of those details is the innate understanding that the ball can be gotten to and hit back. Without that the speediest fellow is one step too slow.

The only really slippery part of a clay court are the lines!

Funny to think how Andre Agassi lost a match that he absolutely should have won - the 1991 Roland Garros final - largely due to very ill-timed rain delays (both of which came while he was up and had tons of momentum), and then the exact opposite happened in the 1999 final. Fate, karma, luck...whatever you want to call it, interesting how it came full circle.

Never knew Andy had even 1 clay court title. Good for him. But doesn't that beg the question even more of why he is not even trying to play some of the more important clay tournaments?

I always get a laugh out of Andre's early career get ups. The purple spandex bike pants under denim shorts with an elastic waistband...awesome!

hello from down under

The 1991 Roland Garros final (Courier Vs Agassi) was played in an extremely windy day. By the end of the fourth set there wasn't much clay left in the court, it was as close to a hardcourt as a claycourt can get. I remember this perfectly.

I know i'm going to be heavily critized for saying this but, 14 years ago, i saw Bruguera playing from 20 feet away twice, and his movement was effortless, if he wasted energy i didn't notice.

skip1515,

You make several valid points to add to my thesis that the movement is key to separating the successful players from the unsuccessful players on clay.

There is no question that believing you CAN get to a ball, that you otherwise would NOT be able to get to on a faster surface, and inversely, that your opponent WILL get to that ball that you just drilled and that would NEVER come back on a faster surface is paramount. And, of course, that all comes back to movement again.

Patience, as I said earlier, is not so much a virtue on the dirt as it is a requirement. Point construction tsakes on a whole new level of importance on clay, as the ability to end a point with one big swing of the racquet is virtually negated by the slower, grittier surface and the exceptional movement of the clay-court master on the other side of the net.

I think both Slice and skip1515 make astute observations, as usual.

I enjoy watching a well-played clay match, in that the point is often won by a subtle angled shot, just outside of the comfort zone, that pushes the opponent to respond -- leaving a hair's breath less time to get the next ball comfortably, which may give an opening to a final putaway or draw an error from the opponent.

This does happen on occasion on the slower hard courts we see during the summer run up to New York, but less so.

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.

I will very shortly post a rant on sliding. . .

without reading all the comments posted my initial toughts on the article are when is the USTA going to lay down red clay courts for American juniors to play on.

with no experience how are American's supposed to defeat players who've played on that surface since they were 5 years old.

Todd, you've got my support for bringing youngsters up on red clay (or even composition), as far more suited to the teaching of the fundamentals of movement, stroke production, point construction, conditioning and tenacity necessary to win on any surface, but particularly on the slower and more regular-bluncing surfaces, including slow hard courts, of which there seem to be more and more.

Pete, I look forward to your rant. LOL!!!

Todd: I also like your idea of bringing youngsters up on red clay. I've spent some playing time on red clay (U.S. version, anyway - some of the courts were indoors), and does help give you time to groove your groundstrokes. Also, it's easier on their bodies

"So there it is, U.S. fans - read it and weep!"

Weep over what? Clay is a nonentity. The grass of Wimbledon is where the money's at. The US hardcourts are where the real tennis stars are made. As far as I'm concerned the Americans are the smart ones who have their schedule right.

Here is South Florida, we have lots of that green composite stuff that Pete mentions in his new "rant" he just put up. I love playing on it, but it's nothing like the real red stuff, and it plays more like a hard court where the ball can take a weird bounce every so often.

In fact, I only know of one red clay court down here, other than the one I understand that Anna K has had built for her at the Iglesias mansion (kids in the junior programs don't get to play on that one).

Todd: I've played on some green clay (Har-Tru) courts as well, and there was a definite different than the red clay courts I've played on. Having grown up on hard courts, I preferred the speed and footing on Har-Tru.

interesting article & comments. Since I've never seen or been on a clay (or grass) court here in the US I have some questions-I learned last year that groundskeepers have to keep the clay moist otherwise it turns to dust and blows around. I also know that wet clay can be pretty sticky (was at a beach somewhere when I was a kid and ruined my flip-flops. I'm surprised that the players, linespeople, and ball kids don't get stuck. Is that because they're moving aound so much?

Todd... comfort playing on clay is the platform for mental strength on clay. If a player wobbles and scrambles, then their mental state wobbles, too. The mental game is key and is keen when all the elements of play and stroke production are in order, like good footwork. Tennis is a running game. If you can't get to the ball and get ready for the next one, the locker room isn't far off.