Clumps of Dirt on Davis Cup Courts...
Watching some of the Davis Cup matches this past weekend, e.g. the United States versus Austria, was a reminder of the challenges of staging a brief 3 day tennis “tournament.” There were several absurdly bad bounces, e.g. the ball bouncing suddenly up and over the head of a player, extremely slippery conditions and large mounds of clay dirt being dislodged by the fancy footwork of the tennis pros such as Andy Roddick,
James Blake, Stefan Koubek and Jurgen Meltzer, competing on the temporary red clay tennis court in Austria. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Davis Cup matches have been played on clumpy, slippery temporary clay tennis courts, e.g. past Russian Davis Cup matches. It is the home team which selects the surface for the Davis Cup tie and clearly they choose a surface which they believe will favor their team because of its type, e.g. clay and speed. However, a bad temporary clay tennis court is actually both dangerous (in terms of possible injuries), as well as detrimental to the quality of play for both teams. The challenge is how to handle this situation in the future since certain countries will continue to choose temporary indoor clay courts for future Davis Cup ties. Therefore, more stringent review of the courts in advance of the ties must be done to ensure the safety of the players.
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