Grass Tennis Courts
There are grass tennis courts… and then there are grass tennis courts at Wimbledon. Every year, there is discussion at Wimbledon regarding the grass courts and how they are playing. Apparently, the composition of the grass was changed a couple years ago from a combination of three different grass seeds to only rye grass. Clearly, there are many more baseline rallies now then there were 20 years ago. However, how much is
the change in the grass seed responsible? If you’ve ever played on grass courts then you realize that it is very rare to get the solid bounces that one sees at Wimbledon which allow for those long baseline rallies. As James Blake commented in one of his interviews, the lovely grass courts at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island, produce a very different brand of tennis. I would argue that it may be the firmness of the ground coupled with how short the grass is cut which creates the better bounces much more than the grass seed mixture. As golfers know, there is a big difference between the grass on the fairway and the grass on the putting green. Wimbledon plays like the very best putting green in the world!
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