{"id":1079,"date":"2013-02-19T16:30:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T21:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavytopspin.com\/?p=1079"},"modified":"2013-02-19T16:30:42","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T21:30:42","slug":"the-fastest-surface-on-the-atp-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/19\/the-fastest-surface-on-the-atp-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fastest Surface on the ATP Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Rafael Nadal<\/a> claimed that the indoor clay surface in Sao Paulo didn’t play like clay<\/a>–it was faster than the surface of the US Open. \u00a0It also wasn’t up to standard, with frequent bad bounces and occasional slides gone wrong.<\/p>\n

It’s easy to write off Rafa’s complaints as the whining of a once-dominant player who inexplicably loses sets to competitors who might otherwise never appear on television<\/a>. \u00a0But what if he’s right? \u00a0What if some clay surfaces are faster than some hard surfaces?<\/p>\n

In fact, I stumbled on this paradox when sharing some surface speed numbers last fall<\/a>. \u00a0In the Brasil Open’s first year at a new venue in Sao Paulo, it’s main draw players hit 58% more aces than expected<\/a>, the highest rate of any ATP tour event, comfortably ahead of European indoor events in Marseille and Montpellier.<\/p>\n

Amazingly, this year, players in Sao Paulo hit\u00a078%\u00a0<\/em>more aces than they would have on an average surface. \u00a0Some of the individual performances<\/a> are impressive: Nicolas Almagro<\/a> hit aces on 21% and 26% of service points in his two matches; Joao Souza<\/a> cracked 27% in a qualifying match. \u00a0The raw numbers aren’t as eye-popping as they might be simply because most of the competitors prefer clay-courts for a reason. \u00a0Put Carlos Berlocq<\/a> on an ice-skating rink and he still won’t hit many aces. \u00a0In fact, Berlocq’s ace rates last week account for three of the top eight<\/a> of the 55 matches he played in the 52 weeks.<\/p>\n

Ace rate doesn’t tell the whole surface speed story, but it’s an awfully good proxy. \u00a0It consistently places the expected indoor tournaments near the top of the rankings and traditionally slower clay events like Monte Carlo and Rome near the bottom. \u00a0So when a clay event spits out numbers like these, something wacky is going on.<\/p>\n

Much has been written of the homogenization of surface speed<\/a>, and certainly many hard courts have gotten slower. \u00a0But the clay courts in Sao Paulo aren’t drifting toward a bland average–they are going where few clay courts have gone before. \u00a0Perhaps, as more events are played on temporary surfaces<\/a>, we’ll continue to see unexpected results like these. \u00a0Certainly, we cannot assume that all clay courts are created equal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Rafael Nadal claimed that the indoor clay surface in Sao Paulo didn’t play like clay–it was faster than the surface of the US Open. \u00a0It also wasn’t up to standard, with frequent bad bounces and occasional slides gone wrong. It’s easy to write off Rafa’s complaints as the whining of a once-dominant player … Continue reading The Fastest Surface on the ATP Tour<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sao-paulo","category-surface-speed"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennisabstract.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}