The Championships, Wimbledon 2018: Women’s Final: delays, conditions and preparation

Serena has played amazingly well to reach the second week in both Grand Slams (Roland Garros and The Championships). This is despite having continuing health issues which make wearing compression clothing necessary. She is an inspiration. I’m not sure I’d be that brave. I’d be moping around and feeling sorry for myself! Serena, however, takes it in her stride and stays positive.  

Nevertheless, conditions made it hard for Serena to have a fair chance at winning Wimbledon. Despite lovely weather, centre court was covered all day until the close of the men’s semi-final. Given there was only around 20 minutes between that match and the women’s final, there was not enough time for the courts to dry out. The grass was clearly damp enough to be slippery in places throughout the men’s semi-final on Saturday because Nadal skidded and almost fell a couple of points before he lost the match. Even the butterflies were enjoying the damp grass during his match! Apparently there are no set rules about when to have the roof open or closed. Surely common sense dictates that the purpose of the roof is to avoid rain delays and weather disruptions or continue play when it becomes too dark to see the ball. So, why was it closed when it was dry and gloriously hot and sunny outside? The UK generally has quite a humid climate so keeping it closed on a hot day may introduce moisture into the atmosphere which affects the grass. I thought centre court had a climate controller system to negate this problem. Nevertheless, given that Nadal slipped and there was an unusual influx of butterflies on court, it seems to me the grass was damper than players would anticipate on a baking hot day. This has a potential knock-on effect for physical and tactical match preparation. For instance, with damper grass:

-          the court is more slippery which makes it harder to sprint around if you use explosive leg power to begin running. This favours certain running styles over others if a player has one main running style so can’t adjust mid-match;

-          the ball bounces lower (so you have less time to run to the ball, you need to stay lower to the ground when hitting the ball and come under the ball with your racquet (making topspin shots for lowering unforced errors harder to use);

-          although flat hitting can be effective on wetter grass because the ball skids so speeding up the pace of the ball, it can be a trickier shot to hit given the lower bouncing balls. Hard, flat shots can produce weak shots or unforced errors if you are attempting to hit flat off an opponent’s slice or sidespin;

-          dropshots are more effective (as they die on the greener softer service box nearer the net);

-          using a variety of spins is more effective (especially slice and sidespin) because the ball doesn’t sit up (making it harder to run down and get your racquet underneath the ball). The damp grass exacerbates the bad bounces spins can produce. This favours certain tactics and playing styles over others and makes it easier to play a good defensive game against an attacking game.   

Given this, the conditions possibly favoured the style of Djokovic and Kerber which is probably why Djokovic preferred the roof to remain closed on Saturday for his match. One main reason cited for having the roof closed for the men’s semi on Saturday was that it kept the conditions the same as for their match the previous evening on Friday. However, I find this an unconvincing reason. Players have to change from playing with the roof open to having it closed due to weather or poor light on the same day with a relatively short break in between to adjust. I see no reason why they should try to replicate the same conditions the following day which is probably impossible to achieve because grass is such a changeable surface. The priority should have been to have fresh conditions for the women’s final, not for one of two men’s semi-finals. I think the women’s final should have been first-up on centre so that the grass was fresh (not worn down by around 2 ½ hrs play on it just prior to starting). Also, if the decision was to have the roof closed for the men’s semi then it wouldn’t have affected the court for the women’s final had the men played after the women’s final. Playing conditions for a final usually are optimum and take priority over any earlier round matches. Hopefully, this won’t happen again next year when court 1 has a roof for the first time. Had court 1 had a roof this year, the men could have started on court 1 with the roof on, carried on until 11pm and re-started the next day on court 1 again rather than on centre where the women’s final was due to take place. Men’s matches are disproportionally overrepresented on show courts so, overall, being on court 1 rather than centre would not affect the men’s game.

Furthermore, making Serena wait to go on court to play the final shows disrespect towards her and the women’s game! In the Open Era, Serena has won far more Grand Slam singles titles than anyone else (23). Margaret Court has only 11 Grand Slam singles titles because the counting only starts 50 years ago when the Open Era began. So I’m not sure why we add in the 6 years (1960-66, retiring after Wimbledon 1966 and returning 1968 in time for the Open Era) of Court’s non-open era Grand Slam singles titles (making her total 24) and then seem to think that Serena still has to win one more Grand Slam singles title to equal Court’s. She eclipsed her a long time ago in this record for the Open Era, which is the record that really matters and counts.   

Waiting to go on court to play a final must have also played havoc with the women’s match preparation as I discussed at the end of my previous blog post. A great deal goes in to preparation. A parallel example is taking an exam. Imagine if you turn up to your exam due to take place that afternoon at 2pm only to be told it can’t take place until a room can be found because there has been a problem with the room booking/scheduling. They can’t tell you when the exam will take place but it’ll be some time before the end of the day. The student now has to come down from their adrenalin rush and wait around for hours until told their exam will start. This scenario is worse for an athlete because a student can go and cram some more and be better prepared but even they will find it difficult to regain that same adrenalin rush they had earlier! The athlete has to be prepared not just mentally, rather like the student, but also physically. This is something the student doesn’t have to worry about. As long as they can sit on a chair they can take the exam! Athletes need far more complex preparation. There’s an entire sports science behind how to prep your body for stamina and strenuous exercise to enable you to reach peak performance ability in a match. Detailed pre-tournament and pre-match routines and schedules are devised for the athlete to stick to and are timed down to the last few hours and minutes before the match. So merely giving the players 20 mins notice before they are due on court is not enough time. In addition, sports psychology talks about the importance of psyching yourself up for matches, especially for individual combative sports, such as boxing and tennis, and how to enter ‘the zone’. This is difficult to suddenly snap into when called up and you can’t remain in the right mental zone for hours before the match either. You’d exhaust yourself before making it onto the court!

Some compared the finals being delayed to being like a rain delay but I don’t think it’s the same. Unlike a rain delay, it is avoidable by re-organising the playing schedule whereas the weather isn’t under your control. Delays and hanging around waiting to play is seen as sufficiently disruptive to players and spectators expecting to see a particular match that large sums of money have been and are being spent constructing roofs over main courts. So by implication, delays are undesirable, adversely impact on matches, drive everyone to distraction and should be avoided at all costs.