Tennis on clay courts is an unpredictable dance of sun, rain, wind and red brick

Yahoo

2 days ago

ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — After six days of tennis in the French capital, a new tournament started at Roland Garros. The players and the venue are the same. It's still the French Open. But as the rain gave way to sunshine and the temperature soared towards 86 degrees (30 celsius) on May 30, the clay courts and the tennis played on them transformed. Groundstrokes leapt off the red brick and flew through the air, while serves scorched off the lines. For those blessed with a forehand with as much topspin as the defending champions Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Świątek, it was a welcome change from the cooler, lower-bouncing conditions of the previous days.
Świątek's forehand looked especially potent in her straight-sets win over world No. 60 Jaqueline Cristian, with their match taking place in the heat of the day.
Advertisement
'The balls were dead faster,' Świątek said in a news conference after her 6-2, 7-5 win.
'I think spinning was much more important to control the ball, and in the air for sure it was flying faster. Even our serves I think we both served faster than we usually do, so it was different.'
Alcaraz, scheduled in the night session against Damir Džumhur, had to manage a less jarring version of the change in conditions in real time. He went two sets up with the sun up and the temperature dry and warm, but as Džumhur raised his level in the third set, the temperature dropped and the air thickened. Alcaraz came through in four sets, 6-1. 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, but he spent longer on court than he would have liked and said that he didn't enjoy the match when it was over.
For the close to two decades in which Rafael Nadal was dominating, his prodigious topspin made the rest of the men's locker room joke that if the weather in Paris was good they might as well go home. His forehand was borderline unplayable on hotter days, clearing his victims' shoulders.
Advertisement
Stan Wawrinka, the 2015 champion, said in a recent video interview that he woke up with a sense of foreboding for the final against Nadal two years later after seeing a hot and sunny day forecast. Nadal, hardly shabby in cold weather at Roland Garros, was so attuned to the weather that he believed that clay-court tennis should not take place at night.
Adjusting to weather conditions is part of tennis on every surface, but never more so than on clay. The red brick dust that tops the layers of white limestone, coal residue, crushed gravel and larger stones that compose a court Roland Garros is alive, responding to the ball, the slides of players' feet — and the weather. A grass court is unplayable with even a little rain and a hard court quickly gets too slick too.
Clay can stay playable through light rain — which means players go through a wider spectrum of conditions than any other surface in the sport, allowing different people's games to thrive depending on them. Wind can blow the clay around and make the surface uneven. In wet or heavy conditions it will absorb moisture and grow softer; after a hot day baking in the sun, it will feel more compact.
'Completely different' was world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka's verdict on the conditions for her straight-sets win over Olga Danilović Friday, compared to her first two rounds. 'The ball flies much faster. The bounces are much higher,' she said in a news conference.
Advertisement
With the huge variations in conditions depending on the weather, players can resemble anxious holiday makers about to go on vaction during the tournament and in the lead-up. 'I genuinely do (check the weather apps a lot),' world No. 9 Alex de Minaur told a few reporters last month. 'A little bit more in the clay swing — before I go to sleep every night or, when I'm (choosing my) rackets.'
The weather prior to Friday's heat was up and down. On the first Sunday, Tommy Paul and Elmer Møller played through sun, wind and rain in their first-round match. 'It's very different when it's raining to when the sun comes — you feel like everything speeds up,' Paul said in a news conference afterwards.
'On top of that, they were kind of expecting rain so they were not watering the court. When the wind blows, it's like a dust storm in your eyes.'
There was more wind and rain in the subsequent few days. Downpours during the first set of Novak Djokovic's first-round match against Mackenzie McDonald briefly halted play on several occasions, but they weren't deemed strong enough to close the roof on Court Philippe-Chatrier. Both players were slipping around and struggling to hit through the ball in the heavier conditions, with the moisture and clay sticking to the balls slowing them down through the air.
Advertisement
By the time Djokovic played his second round against Corentin Moutet two days later, the sun was out and it felt like a different tournament. On rainy days, the relatively small site can feel claustrophobic. Grey, wet and cold is not what Roland Garros and clay-court tennis is supposed to be.
'It's challenging, no doubt about it,' Djokovic said in a news conference after beating Moutet.
'But it's something that we're used to when it comes to Paris, as well. The weather is quite unpredictable generally. It can be very cold and very warm, which affects the ball bounce. It affects how the ball travels through the air.
'You just have to be ready for anything.'
Advertisement
Since it follows the sun, tennis is not associated with the frigid weather of other sports. There is no cliché like one of the most famous in football, which asks if the greatest players can play at their best under inhospitable conditions: 'Can they do it on a cold, wet Tuesday night in Stoke?'
A chilly, drizzly morning in the 16th arrondissement can come close. Last year the rain and low temperatures were incessant for the first week, with players taking to the court wearing thermals. Some played psychological tricks on themselves.
'I was telling myself walking into the match that I love these types of conditions, that I wish every day was like this,' de Minaur said last year, after beating the U.S.'s Alex Michelsen in a soggy, chilly first-round affair. 'It was cold, it was drizzling, it was miserable out there,' he said Tuesday, a year on but with the memory still lodged in his brain.
'Normally it clears up and the weather gets a little bit warmer and a little bit sunnier. That's what we're all kind of hoping to get to.'
Advertisement
De Minaur made it as far as Thursday. The weather did pick up, but he was knocked out by Alexander Bublik and so will miss the big uptick in temperature and speed of the courts. 'It's two separate tournaments,' he told a few reporters in April of the difference at Roland Garros when the weather changes.
Madison Keys, America's world No. 5 and the reigning Australian Open champion, played on the first Monday and then the much warmer Thursday. Ahead of the tournament, she relived the 2016 tournament, four years before a roof was installed on Philippe-Chatrier.
Incessant rain caused a backlog of matches, which led to play in conditions that would normally lead to a match being suspended.
'I played Kiki Bertens on the old Court One in the rain, and I was not having a good time,' she said in an interview last month.
Advertisement
'The clay is so heavy and it sticks to your shoes. The ball kids start throwing the ball so that they're not picking up too much moisture and clay. But they're still absorbing so much and the balls are fluffing up, and I'm playing Bertens, a great clay-court player. And it was just so heavy … You can feel like all of the elements are mounting up against you.'
Keys ended up losing 7-6(4), 6-3 — a fourth-round match completed on the second Wednesday, normally reserved for quarterfinals.
Some current players, like Nadal, have clear preferences about when they like to play on clay. Alexander Zverev, the world No. 3 and one of the tour's best clay-courters, can still draw a straight line from weather conditions to his best results on the surface.
'There's a big difference whether it's 30 degrees (celsius) or 10 degrees. There's a big difference whether it's raining or it's completely dry. Big difference in altitude to sea level,' he said in a news conference last month.
Advertisement
'All the Masters 1,000 tournaments I won on clay were always in conditions when it was very, very warm. In Munich (earlier this year) I won because it was very, very warm. The years before I could barely win a match because it was 8 degrees and sometimes snowing.
'There's a reason why, for example, in Monaco, I never been past the semifinals, right, but Madrid and Rome I both won twice before.
'When it's cold the court is very, very soft and not as bouncy, the ball doesn't bounce as high, the ball doesn't go through the court as much. When it's like in Madrid, sunshine and quite warm, the court gets much firmer and the clay is kind of on top of the court. When it's cold you feel like you're running with the clay, and when it's hot you feel like the clay's just on top of the court like a powder.
'I think non-tennis people who watch tennis don't really understand what that means.'
Advertisement
Others, like America's Ben Shelton and former Roland Garros finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas, spoke about how different the various clay events are.
The Madrid Open is the fastest, because of the city's relatively high altitude. The WTA Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, is indoors, so rain and wind don't enter the equation, while Monte Carlo in early to mid-April tends to be cooler and a touch slower than the tournaments later in spring.
The Italian Open in Rome is considered the closest facsimile to Roland Garros, but the clay at the two events comes from different bricks and the court composition is different. The one or two millimeters of red brick at the French Open sit on top of limestone; the courts used at the Italian Open have three layers of brick of different finenesses.
Even within the same tournament, there can be big variations from court to court. World No. 11 Daniil Medvedev said that at the Italian Open, the Grand Stand Arena — a new court — 'is just like another dimension.'
Advertisement
Medvedev, who has had a love-hate relationship with clay that mostly skews hate, added in a news conference in Paris: 'Roland Garros can be tough because sometimes it's very cold at night, trying to hit a winner if you're not Carlos (Alcaraz) or Jannik (Sinner). Sometimes it can be a sunny day where the ball is jumping and it's tough to control. You just have to adapt.'
Adjusting the tension of their racket is one of the main ways players adjust. In hotter weather, players will tighten the tension of their racket to give themselves a bit more control; they might loosen it on colder days to try and help the ball trampoline off the strings.
Coco Gauff said after beating Tereza Valentová on Thursday that she had gone up in tension for that match, after playing Olivia Gadecki in conditions that 'felt so slow and so windy.' Świątek adjusted her string tension against Cristian Friday too.
Ultimately players want to find a way to win on clay whatever the weather, which is what separates the true masters of the surface from the other. Nadal was just as dominant during the 2020 French Open, played in October because of the Covid-19 pandemic, as he was in spring. So too was Świątek, who won the first of her four Roland Garros titles that year. Accordingly, she finds it difficult to pick her favorite weather in which to win.
Advertisement
'The first one I won, it was obviously colder, the balls got heavy. It was also wet, it was raining all the time,' she said in a news conference.
'But lately, I feel like in hot conditions, my topspin is jumping a little bit higher. It's hard to choose. I think I like both. It's all about adjusting, and if I adjust well, I can play.'
For Świątek, clay's liveliness in different conditions is part of the appeal.
'I think it gives more variety and it's more interesting. And with all the dirt and sometimes playing in cold, sometimes in hot weather, I feel like… we're just grinding as athletes and adjusting to the weather for sure is an important part of that,' she said in a huddle in Madrid last month.
Advertisement
The difference from day to night, when Nadal felt clay events shouldn't be played, and even court to court at Roland Garros and elsewhere mean that week to week, day to day, no clay court is ever quite the same.
The players know that, and they know they can't control the elements. But over the second week of the tournament, expect weather apps to be frantically refreshed in the Boulogne-Billancourt area.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Tennis, Women's Tennis
2025 The Athletic Media Company