Shubert’s Blog – Upsets at Wimby?

Written by: Staff on 24th June 2012

Shubert's Blog - Upsets at Wimby? |

Will we see upsets at this year’s Wimbledon? It’s highly doubtful. Despite being one of the most unpredictable seasons because of its brevity and unfamiliar nature, the grass events on both men’s and women’s sides usually hold true to their seeding. Grass is such an unforgiving surface – You lose your footing, you sometimes never feel like you have your footing in the first place, the balls don’t bounce, and it’s faster than any other surface… If you add all these factors up and put two players together, the better one usually comes out on top. Why? It’s simply comes down to basics. The better player is better because they can either handle the speeds better, move better, serve better, or attack better. It becomes a very basic confrontation because there’s simply no other way around these obstacles – You can’t grind on a grass court and hope your opponent misses because its 1-shot, 2-shot tennis, if you’re somehow able to keep up after the first ball, you’re definitely in for trouble on the next!

Take hard court for instance – We’ve witnessed clay court specialists dominate on slower hard courts by sliding around the back fence and retrieving. We’ve also seen new players emerge and have success that are so tall they are literally serving out of trees and have hitting zones that shorter players can’t seem to hit away from. So there is some wiggle room for intangibles during a hard court match. Clay courts offer these intangibles too by naturally giving players more time and higher bounces, sort of evening out the playing field. Stamina comes into question. Does grass court tennis require stamina? Yes of course, but not as much as hard court or clay court tennis. Grass is spongy and bouncy, plus the points don’t last long at all. You have to put more of a premium on your serve because if you drop just one service game, it’s nearly impossible to rely on breaking back. Again, a better player is better simply because they have a better serve or ability to hold serve. So if you happen to be watching the tennis this week on television, don’t worry about watching re-runs of the same upset match!