Why are there so many different court types in tennis?
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There are different types of tennis courts to make the game more fun and interesting. Some courts are like grass in a yard, making the ball bounce fast and low. Others are like playing in a sandbox, where the ball bounces slower and higher. Some courts are like the hard ground, giving a bounce that is just right. Having different courts helps make the game exciting because players have to learn how to play on all of them!
Ooooo interested to know the answer to this – maybe historically due to different regions geography/ development of the game but I have no idea?
I suspect that, as tennis was a minor professional sport for a long time, local variations developed to such an extent that the game has variations; eg. clay. I would be interested to know for sure.
Why are baseball fields all different shapes?
Because it happened over time and people liked the variety enough that they prefer to keep it that way
There’s like 3 or 4. And a whole tournament always uses only 1 court type (to use a different court it has to be a different tournament)
I do think the Olympics tennis should only use hard court though. Fuck the idea of using grass just bc Wimbledon (as occurred in 2012) or clay just bc French Open (as occurred in 2024).
The different surfaces are there for historic reasons as the game evolved usually based on the surface available to create a court. As tennis historically was a royal game you can trace the lineage of each court type to the actual royal courts where the game evolved.
Today you have 4 main types of courts. Grass, Clay, Hard and Carpet (the latter is everything from artificial grass to polymer courts which are laid on top of another surface).
For professional tournaments especially the grand slam ones only Clay, Grass and Hard courts are used. With Wimbledon being grass, the French open being Clay and US Open being hard.
The surfaces impact the speed of the game since the ball bounces back at different rates as well as the level of traction available for the player.
The ITF which is the body governing tennis has a classification system where a number from 1 to 5 defines the speed of the game which the court will allow and the letters A to J defining the material (with J being the catch all for anything that isn’t classified specifically).
So your local tennis club would usually have the courts rated as A and G for acrylic or concrete being the most common combined with 4/5 which is medium-fast to fast courts, tho acrylic can often go slower especially for indoor courts which are often also used for other sports.
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