Football didn’t quite come home to England in 2018. Tennis though can be counted on to return to one of its British birthplaces every summer, as the world’s best players slide gracefully into London SW19 for “the Championships, Wimbledon” as the world’s oldest tennis tournament is correctly known.
To most of us, it’s plain Wimbledon, a summer ritual that might mean enjoying strawberries and cream in front of the television or being inspired to put down the remote to pick up a racquet. Either way its on- and off-court rituals are a familiar fixture at the peak of world sport.
To players, it is part of the Grand Slam, just one of four Grand Slam tennis tournaments – “the Majors”. These being the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open. They were established at the top of the international tennis tree in the 1920s.
If you’re keen enough, there’s nothing to stop you playing tennis year round, especially if you have access to an indoor court. But tennis is by tradition a summer game, with a year-round calendar thanks to indoor courts and a global season.
January: Australian Open, Melbourne In January the ATP circus heads to Melbourne for the Australian Open. The tournament was elevated to Major status in 1924 and always kicks off in the last two weeks of January. The first serve in 2019 will be whacked down on 14th January.
May: French Open, Paris At the end of May, it’s time to decamp to Paris’ Stade Roland-Garros for the French Open, which will open on 27th May, when Rafael Nadal and Simona Halep will defend their 2018 titles.
June: Wimbledon, London As summer arrives in the UK (or not) at the end of June Wimbledon welcomes the world’s cameras – and around 23 tonnes of strawberries – for its fortnight in the sun.
September: US Open, New York Finally, it’s destination New York for the US Open at Flushing Meadow, where a finals-day ticket on September 9th this year will set you back $285 at the very least – and probably 10 times more.
To us simple spectators, the tournaments might look like the same game against different backdrops, but to the players, and to watchers who also play, they are very different tests of skill and character defined by the surfaces on which they’re played.
Every player knows that different surfaces have different demands.
Wimbledon’s perfectly manicured grass courts are killing fields for many tennis ambitions. On grass the bounce is low and fast; and grass can change, over a tournament and even a match. Players slip, knees are strained, and there’s precious little time to get used to a surface that is now extremely rare on the professional circuit.
Roland Garros is the last clay-court tournament standing. Top-spin and good defence from the baseline are more valuable to clay-court specialists than the agility and foot speed of a grass winner. Away from the professional game, clay is also falling out of favour, because it’s hard to maintain, and any player will leave the court with part of the court on their once-white clothing.
The Australian Open was once a grass-court cousin of Wimbledon but made the switch to hard-court in 1988. The Aussies might be justly proud of the Rod Laver stadium, named after one of their greatest ever players, but the courts are made in the USA. The Plexicushion shipped in from Massachusetts has been in use since 2007, and is rated as “medium speed” by the International Tennis Foundation.
In New York, the players walk out onto another hard court. DecoTurf, a “Category 4, Medium-Fast” surface, is made by the same company that makes the Australian courts, and it is these “hard courts” that amateurs are probably most likely to play on these days.
These different challenges mean that any player who can complete the Grand Slam in a year – or even across years – can call themselves the complete player.
On this basis, Steffi Graf, has a great claim to be the greatest ever player: the only person to complete a single-year grand slam in 1988. Chucking in a couple of Major doubles titles for good measure, the press granted her a unique “Golden Slam” title when she topped the year off with an Olympic gold medal.
For the guys, Rod Laver, the great Australian, completed two single-year slams, another unique achievement, in 1962 and 1969. Before him, only the American, Don Budge, had completed the slam, in 1938.
Before Steffi Graf, only two women had managed singles slams in a year. American Maureen Connolly, affectionately called “Little Mo” did it first in 1953 during a run of six consecutive tournament wins. Australia’s Margaret Court matched her in 1970 all the way down to the six-title unbeaten streak.
Many more players have completed career slams in a single format. Fred Perry is – so far, the only Brit, and on the current men’s tour, Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, and Novak Djokovic all have career slams on their CVs.
In the women’s game 10 players have done it. Little Mo was just 18 when she got the set, Steffi Graf was a year older, and Serena Williams just 21-years-old when she completed her two-year slam in 2003 at the Australian Open. Maria Sharapova’s surprise win in Paris in 2012 gave her a patient eight-year career slam.
Tennis players are surely fitter than they ever were, even while the calendar gets longer and tougher. And, with all the tech and technique help they have, the great players of the 2010s and beyond will surely be able to match the wooden-racket winners of the 1930s and ‘50s. Would anyone bet against Serena Williams achieving one final superlative?
If you think you – or one of your kids – might have it in you then start practising now, because alongside loads of talent you can guarantee a slam will always be lots of hard work.
Browse our tennis holidays, and get the practise in this summer.
Tennis is fantastic fun and fantastically simple at heart. When you start though, the scoring system can feel like it was designed by malicious surrealists. It was probably medieval French courtiers in reality. This guide will help you through from first serve to match point as sweetly and smoothly as strawberries and cream.
A tennis holiday is the perfect way to see if tennis is the right activity for you, have loads of fun in the sun and start your love affair with the sport.
Tennis is a sport that can be played on many different surfaces. Each surface has different playing characteristics which will affect the style of play and a players natural playing ability.
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