Roger Federer's Controversial Statement

The last couple of years, one of the biggest stories in tennis off the court has been the speed of the game. Some people say all surfaces are the same. Professional players keep complaining about the quality of the tennis balls. However, there’s one comment that recently has turned more heads. That’s Roger Federer’s controversial statement that tournament directors want a Sinner–Alcaraz final and, therefore, all the courts are playing the same. I think Roger Federer was unfairly criticized for saying this, and he was taken out of context, for sure, because he didn’t specify a time frame.

Pick & Choose

We need not only fast courts, but also to see Alcaraz or Sinner figure it out on lightning-fast courts, then have the exact match on super slow courts, and see how that matches up. And that’s how the ranking points used to be. Remember back in the day, only 12 tournaments counted, so everybody would play on their favorite surface, stack their surfaces, and sometimes meet.

And those were the best matches, you know, when you had the attacker against the retriever. And now everybody plays similarly. It’s because the tournament directors have allowed, with the ball speed and the court speed, that every week is basically the same. And that’s why you can just go from winning, I don’t know, the French Open, Wimbledon, US Open, and just play the same way.

Court Speed

I do think there’s a big difference in court speeds when we’re talking about the 90s and the 2000s. I do believe this is where tennis changed drastically. I think that many tournaments were concerned in the era of the big servers, when you had, for example, Sampras matches that featured absolutely no rallies. I do think that some people found that style of tennis boring. These were the 90s, and then in the 2000s things changed.

I do believe it was in 2001 when the Wimbledon surface started playing much slower, and interestingly, that’s where Federer beat Sampras in the fourth round. So I don’t think there’s been much change in the 2000s. And one of the reasons why Federer was criticized so much after making the statement is that when you look at the data, we can see that, in fact, it’s the opposite.

The courts have gotten faster over the last few years. More specifically, regarding hard courts, you’re going to have a hard time finding a hard-court tournament that has slowed down its courts. This is even true for the slowest hard-court tournament of a big caliber, which is Indian Wells.

Court Variety

Roger Federer said he wants to see both lightning-fast and super-slow courts. He wants to see Sinner and Alcaraz battle it out on lightning-fast and super-slow courts. I think Federer, being an old-school guy who’s been around for a while, when he says lightning-fast, he’s talking about courts from back in the '90s. Because some of you guys might not know that players back then used to compete on carpet, a surface that doesn’t exist anymore. So if you are a baseliner that prefers slow surfaces, you’re going to struggle on that surface. And big servers, players that perform well on fast surfaces, are going to perform really well.

Now, interestingly, the CPI data on the Tennis Nerd website suggests that clay courts have also gotten faster. So I do agree with Roger Federer 100%. Bring back the lightning-fast courts and bring back the super slow courts where you’re going to have long rallies and where it’s going to be so hard to hit winners. I do want to see variety, because players will, of course, adapt to the surface. But it would be interesting to see how players adapt to these surfaces and how they play against each other when there’s a stark difference between the surfaces.

Bad Balls

But one thing that no one is mentioning is the tennis balls. And I’ve got to tell you, as a player, I’m seeing a stark difference in tennis ball quality. Interestingly, the price keeps going up, but the quality keeps going in the other direction. You open up a new can of tennis balls, and you hit for a half hour, and the balls fluff up. I would say that after the pandemic, ball quality started to decline significantly.

The balls have to be taken into consideration, and they are a massive factor in why tennis is played primarily from the baseline and why we have all these extended rallies. I thought last year, when I watched some matches at the Paris Masters, that it didn't look like indoor tennis.

And if you take court speed out of the equation and just consider that the balls now are so fluffed up, they’re so big, they’re so heavy and slow, I think this is one of the most concerning factors in the current game. Now, of course, we have to remember the 90s when we had no rallies at all. So I do understand the wish of tournament directors to see longer rallies. Don’t get me wrong. But I do agree with Roger Federer 100% that variety is good for the game, and that different conditions are suitable for it.

Pro’s Performance

And on top of all that, the fact that the balls are fluffier and of a lower quality affects players differently. I do think that players at the very top of the game — we’re talking about Sinner, Alcaraz, and Djokovic — don’t seem to be affected by what balls they play with. They seem to be able to hit these balls the same way they do with better-quality balls. According to Daniil Medvedev, Sinner and Alcaraz are not affected by balls that fluff up. They rip the ball so hard that it doesn’t really matter.

But many players are negatively affected by the tennis balls. For example, speaking of Daniil Medvedev, his performances have gone down big time. And I know that he’s been experimenting with his racket setups. He’s playing with different rackets, different string setups, and he’s looking to get more power. He’s affected by the ball quality more than some other players. Another player that’s affected by this, in my opinion, is Tsitsipas, who has also been struggling as of late. You can even possibly include Zverev in this category of players who are struggling with ball quality, even though his results have been better than Medvedev’s and Tsitsipas’s.

Final Thoughts

But in any case, whatever level of tennis is affected, we don’t want to play with balls that fluff up. We want good ball quality. We want balls that last longer. We don’t want to toss them in the garbage after one set. So something has to be done about ball quality. I don’t exactly know what can be done.

Thankfully, the Wilson US Open ball has improved significantly. I’ve played some matches recently with it, and it doesn’t fluff up quite as much as it used to. Hopefully, the trend of poor ball quality will end, as we are currently paying higher prices for lower-quality balls. And this is affecting all of us, whether we’re talking about the recreational level or the elite level. Similarly, we want to play with better-quality tennis balls.