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    At Wimbledon, Players Must Deal With the Challenge of Grass

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    Fewer and fewer events are held on that surface. It can be tricky, and injuries are common.For Debbie Jevans, a seat on Centre Court at Wimbledon requires no more than a left turn out of her office, then a right turn past the trophies honoring past champions. A few short steps further, the same steps taken by the competitors on finals day, and Jevans finds herself on hallowed grass.“Centre Court is such a special place,” said Jevans, the first female chair of the All England Club, by video call last month. “The court is pristine, the flowers look amazing, the overviews of St. Mary’s Church in the background. I feel an enormous sense of pride and thanks to the hundreds of people who have got us to this point.”Seeing the elegance and lush lawns on opening day at Wimbledon is, for players and fans, like stepping back in time. One of the biggest reasons is because professional play on grass is as elusive as a Wimbledon title itself.Wimbledon groundskeepers work most of the year to maintain the rye grass courts, which allows the ground underneath to remain dry and firm.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesIga Swiatek has played 23 WTA grass-court singles matches out of almost 400 total in her career. Swiatek, the world No. 1, has not advanced beyond the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.Jannik Sinner, the newly named world No. 1 in men’s tennis, enters Wimbledon having played just one ATP grass-court tournament this year — which he won over Hubert Hurkacz in Halle, Germany, on June 23 — and only nine in his career. One of those matches was a five-set Wimbledon quarterfinal loss to Novak Djokovic in 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Has Wimbledon’s Beguiling Grass Robbed the Grand Slam of Its Magic?

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      Casper Ruud, the three-time Grand Slam tournament finalist, took a nontraditional approach to getting ready for Wimbledon, which is widely considered the most prestigious tournament in tennis.It included attending more concerts featuring his favorite singer, the Weeknd, than playing actual tennis matches on grass.Unsurprisingly, Liam Broady, a 29-year-old journeyman from Britain who is ranked 142nd in the world, knocked Ruud out in the second round on Thursday. Ruud, ranked No. 4 in the world, was OK with that. “He’s a much better grass court player than myself,” Ruud said of Broady.There was a time when many of the best tennis players made succeeding at Wimbledon the focus of their seasons, and some considered their careers incomplete unless they had won in the cradle of the sport. Everyone from Rod Laver to Martina Navratilova has said they came to Wimbledon to connect with the roots of the sport.Nowadays, with the growth in prominence of the other three Grand Slam tournaments and the grass court season evolving into a quirky, roughly one-month detour from the rest of the tennis calendar, many top players can’t find the time or the head space to make being good on grass a priority. If it costs them tennis immortality, so be it.Grass flew from under Andy Murray’s feet during his match with Stefanos Tsitsipas on Centre Court.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesBlasphemous as it is to say, to plenty of players, even great ones, Wimbledon has become just another Grand Slam tournament.“I don’t know if winning Wimbledon is, in my view, more bigger than winning the U.S. Open or winning the Australian Open,” said Victoria Azarenka, the former world No. 1. “They’re all very important tournaments.”In part, Wimbledon has itself to blame. In the early 2000s, with ever-improving racket and string technology helping players hit the ball with newfound power, Wimbledon began to sow its courts entirely with perennial ryegrass instead of the mix of ryegrass and red fescue it had used. The switch made the courts more durable and delivered cleaner, higher bounces, allowing the surfaces to play a lot more like a hard court than a ruddy ice rink.Around the same time, the French Open made its courts harder and faster, which basically caused the extinction of the clay court specialist who won in Paris but nowhere else. Within a few years, play at the four Grand Slam tournaments had become more similar than different. The same players starting winning nearly all of them, and the accumulation of Grand Slam tournament titles over the course of a career became the dominant tennis narrative, rather than who could win that august title in front of members of the British royal family in their courtside box.Still, it remains true that grass court tennis is different from all other tennis, and the All England Club continues to have plenty of fans.They include nearly all of the British players, many of whom grew up chasing tennis balls on grass at their local clubs, and Novak Djokovic, now considered the greatest player of the Open Era, which began in 1968. He marks the beginning of his tennis life with watching Wimbledon on television as a small boy. Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, both top Americans, said they wished the grass court season were longer, because it suited their styles and had a purity to it.Bob Bryan, the U.S. Davis Cup captain and the winner of four Wimbledon doubles titles, said nothing raised goose bumps like walking through the wrought-iron gates of the All England Club.Murray and Tsitsipas had to finish their second-round match, interrupted by Wimbledon’s curfew, on Friday.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times“It is the sport’s Holy Grail,” Bryan said. “There is nothing like it.”Yes, but that darn grass — that classic surface on which three of the four Grand Slam tournaments used to be contested — has virtually disappeared from the sport.Daniil Medvedev of Russia said he had always appreciated so much about Wimbledon — the flowers, all a perfect color and in just the right spot; the food; the plush locker rooms. But then you have to play on grass, which can make even the best of the best feel as if they are terrible at tennis.“You lose, you go crazy,” Medvedev said. “You’re like, ‘No, I played so bad.’”Stefanos Tsitsipas spent a chunk of the interregnum between the French Open and Wimbledon posting on social media from luxurious locales with his new “soul mate,” Paula Badosa of Spain, a star of the women’s tour, rather than practicing on grass.He said a win on clay, especially at the French Open, left him feeling gritty and dirty and spent in the best way. On grass, he said, it can feel clean and a bit empty, though he looked far from that Friday after he had beaten Andy Murray, one of the game’s great grass court players, on Centre Court.For the men, there is another issue. Djokovic has been so good here for so long, having won the last four Wimbledon men’s singles titles, seven overall and 31 consecutive matches — that the rest of the field sometimes figures, what’s the point?“He seems like he’s getting better,” said Lorenzo Musetti, the rising Italian, who only recently started winning on grass — somewhat to his surprise. He said he had struggled there because everywhere else he could stand up and whale away on the ball. At Wimbledon, even with the new grass, the ball stays low enough to make players essentially hold a squat for three hours and use their feet and their calf and thigh muscles to drive their movements, like ski racers coming down a slope. That may be one reason Djokovic excels — he was a standout skier before he went all in on tennis — and many tall players have no use for the demands of grass.Women struggle, too. Iga Swiatek — the world No. 1, who has never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon — said her deep runs at the French Open, which she has won the past two years, prevented her from having enough time to rest and play enough matches to acclimate to the unpredictable bounces on grass. She said she had considered training on grass in the off-season in November and December but had decided it would leave her unprepared for the Australian Open in January.Iga Swiatek slipped during her first-round match against China’s Zhu Lin on Monday.Hannah Mckay/Reuters“Throughout the whole year, I’m not really thinking about that,” she said of grass prep.Alexander Davidovich Fokina, a Spaniard who is promising and dangerous on clay and hardcourts, said he struggled with his confidence as soon as he stepped on grass.“Just very, very hard,” he said.Then there is Andrey Rublev, another Russian, who described grass as a maddening, anxiety-provoking form of tennis, with short rallies and results that could seem illogical.“You feel so confident, and then you go on court and the guy, he makes four aces, two returns, unreal — out of nowhere, he breaks you, and the set is over,” Rublev said. “And maybe sometimes you feel super tight, like, I cannot move, I cannot put one ball in the court. And then the guy does two double faults, and the ball hits the frame of your racket and goes in, you break him, and then you win a set.”Medvedev doesn’t even think playing the preparatory grass tournaments makes much of a difference, because grass is different in Germany, the Netherlands and the various locales in England. He said that the field courts at the All England Club played extremely fast and that the stadium courts were slow.Will he ever feel at home on the grass? After his second-round win on Friday, he said he might be getting closer.“Maybe at the door,” he said. “Not inside, but at the door.”As for Ruud, he said after his loss that he would keep trying but that winning Wimbledon might not be in the cards. Every time he cuts loose on his lethal forehand, he feels as if he is going to tumble and get injured because of how he lands and then has to push off to chase the next shot.He did enter the men’s doubles tournament, which would allow him to stick around for a bit before he gets back to some clay court tennis in Europe later this month, but he pulled out on Saturday citing shoulder pain.Now he has more free time on his hands, with The Weeknd playing two concerts in London this weekend.A worn patch of grass near the center of the baseline at Centre Court.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times More

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      Carlos Alcaraz Has Been Studying the Grass Court Masters. That Means Andy Murray.

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      On a day many matches were rained out at the All England Club, Alcaraz displayed his continued improvement on grass, and what he has learned from Murray.Carlos Alcaraz took a little time to rest after coming up short in the French Open last month, and then he embarked on the next step toward strengthening one of the few remaining weaknesses in his tennis development — playing on grass.For Alcaraz, the 20-year-old world No. 1, that meant getting enough training sessions and matches on the surface that is at once the most traditional and most quirky in the sport. It also meant hours of watching videos of Andy Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion and one of the masters of grass court tennis.On a day of rain that caused the cancellation or suspension of nearly every match not contested on the two covered courts at the All England Club, Alcaraz showed that his homework was paying off, and Murray provided the young Spaniard with a fresh batch of study material.Alcaraz has never advanced past the round of 16 at Wimbledon, but he has left no doubt about his goals for his third go-round at this most venerated of tennis competitions.“To win the tournament,” he said after the 6-0, 6-2, 7-5 pounding he delivered to Jeremy Chardy of France. “I have a lot of confidence right now.”An afternoon of play against Chardy, who had announced that he planned to retire after this tournament, was sure to help with that. There was little chance that Chardy was going to provide much of a challenge for Alcaraz at 36 years old, ranked 542nd in the world, and with just one tour level win this year.But for Alcaraz, who grew up mostly playing on red clay, the value of the day came not from the difficulty of his opponent. It came from spending more time on the sport’s most beguiling surface. With each match at Wimbledon Alcaraz gets closer to the inevitable — when the most talented young player becomes every bit as good on grass as he is everywhere else.Alcaraz, left, and Andy Murray at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna in 2021.Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty ImagesThis is where watching videos of Murray comes in. Alcaraz knows how to hit a tennis ball as well as and as hard as anyone, and his drop shot is as good as it gets on clay and hard courts. He’s also just about the fastest player in the game, especially on clay and hard courts. But he has said he needs to learn how to adapt his speed and his repertoire of shots to the grass.Few players have shown how to do that better than Murray, who won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016, and showed why Tuesday afternoon in his 6-3, 6-0, 6-1 dismantling of Ryan Peniston, a fellow Briton.There are others who have conquered grass, of course, namely Roger Federer, who won a record eight men’s singles titles at Wimbledon and spent the afternoon chatting quietly in the front row of the royal box with Catherine, Princess of Wales, after he was celebrated with a video and a standing ovation. Alcaraz has studied his matches, too.And then there is Novak Djokovic, who has won the last four singles titles here, seven overall, and is on a 29-match Wimbledon winning streak. The problem with studying Djokovic is that he moves differently than everyone else on grass.Djokovic has somehow figured out how to glide and slide as though he were on clay or a hard court. When others try to play that way, they often end up on their backsides or with a strained groin. It is a style of grass court tennis that should come with a “don’t try this” warning.Alcaraz didn’t. Not on his way to the title at the grass court tuneup at Queen’s Club two weeks ago, or against Chardy on Tuesday, when he displayed plenty of signs of his Murray/Federer imitation game.Alcaraz took on balls ever so slightly earlier, a necessary move since they barely bounce on grass. He decelerated and turned with a series of quick stutter steps instead of his usual lightning quick plant-and-pivot. He showed off his improving serve, firing 10 aces, with plenty of them sliding off the court, including a final one on match point into the deep-wide corner of the service box that slid off the court before Chardy could move for it.“Every time that I get out to the court playing, it’s better for me,” he said when it was over. “I get more experience that is really, really important on that surface.”Murray does not lack for experience on grass and has almost always looked comfortable at the All England Club, making the third round in his debut in the main draw in 2005, when he was just 18 years old. Tuesday’s win over Peniston provided plenty of grass court study tips.Alcaraz often talks about how he begins every match wanting to play aggressively. Murray showed that on grass, aggression can take many forms beyond Alcaraz’s crushing forehands.Andy Murray in action in his first-round match on Tuesday.Hannah Mckay/ReutersHe played blocked backhand returns of serve that died in the front of the court to set up passing shots and sent drop volleys nearly sideways. In some rallies he produced a series of strokes that passed ever closer to the top of the net, and slid ever lower as they landed on the grass. One passing shot while Peniston was at the net darted toward his feet as though it fell off a table as soon as it passed over the tape. It was all over in two hours and 1 minute, one of Murray’s easier days on Centre Court, though he confessed to feeling nervous early on.“I like to feel that way,” he said “If I was going on the court and felt flat, didn’t have any emotion when I’m walking out there, that’s something that would probably be a bit wrong.”When Peniston committed his final error, Murray celebrated with the slightest of fist pumps and a brief wave to the crowd.He noted that the last time Federer had watched him on Centre Court was in the final of the 2012 Olympics, when Federer was cheering on his countryman and Murray’s opponent that day, Stan Wawrinka.“I was glad to get a few claps today,” Murray said.Murray skipped the French Open to begin his preparations for Wimbledon, the tournament he believes offers him the best chance to play into the second week.Those chances likely improved Tuesday when the match between his potential opponents, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Dominic Thiem, was suspended shortly after Thiem won the first set. They will likely resume Wednesday, with the winner taking on Murray, almost undoubtedly on Centre Court, Thursday.Murray said he does not study draws, preferring instead to focus only on his next match rather than waste time on hypotheticals. If he did, he would find a potential opponent in the semifinals who would be familiar with his tricks.That would be Alcaraz. More

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      Before Wimbledon, There’s Practice on Grass at an English Garden Party

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      The Boodles, which draws elite players on their way to the All England Club, is unlike nearly anything else on the tennis calendar — a Gatsby-like few days on an estate outside London.Even for the best tennis players in the world, the days before a Grand Slam can be filled with nerves and stress, especially the time leading up to Wimbledon, the grandest Grand Slam of them all.Days can become a blur of hunting for hitting partners and time on the limited practice courts a tournament has available, or one last try to win some tour-level matches at competitions in Eastbourne or Majorca.A handful of pros, including several clients of Patricio Apey, a longtime agent, end up at a classic English garden party called the Boodles that is unlike nearly anything else on the tennis calendar — a Gatsby-like few days on an estate outside London that makes Wimbledon’s All England Club, supposedly the apotheosis of tennis elegance, feel like a gathering of the masses at the local park.The Boodles tennis exhibition, set on a sprawling estate outside London, is unlike nearly anything else on the sport’s calendar.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesDriving in this morning, I was kind of shocked,” Lorenzo Musetti, the rising star from Italy, said of the 300-acre property, whose owner since 2021 has been Reliance Industries, a company run by the Ambani family of India, which bought it for roughly $70 million. “Not every day you see a property like this.”Or a high-end jewelry show masquerading as a tennis event at a sprawling former country club called Stoke Park.“The best event we do all year,” said Michael Wainwright, the managing director of Boodles, the Liverpool- and London-based jewelry company that his family has owned since 1880.Guests in the outdoor seating area before the matches began.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesStoke Park was bought by Reliance Industries, a company run by India’s Ambani family, for roughly $70 million in 2021.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesWhen he started the Boodles two decades ago, Apey wasn’t thinking about putting on a tennis event that would feel more like a polo match. He just knew that players who won Wimbledon made more money than players who won the other major tournaments. (Wimbledon’s men’s and women’s singles champions will earn nearly $3 million each this year.)He represented a number of players who excelled on clay courts but not on grass. They struggled to acclimate during the few weeks between the French Open and Wimbledon because they often lost early in the few tournaments available during the brief grass court season.“I needed to get them more matches,” Apey said.The only way for him to do that, he reasoned, was to create a grass court exhibition event near London ahead of Wimbledon. Stoke Park, with its some two-dozen-bedroom mansion, a rolling golf course — tennis players love to relax with rounds of golf — and immaculate grass tennis courts provided the perfect location.Through an acquaintance, he landed a meeting with Wainwright and his older brother, Nicholas, who warmed to the idea. It was a soft sell opportunity: Put their jewelry in front of hundreds of their top customers and thousands more in the upper echelon of the tennis demographic (think pocket squares and long, flowery summer dresses) whiling away a summer afternoon drinking champagne and Pimm’s, eating multicourse catered lunches, enjoying high tea, browsing a tented pavilion filled with sparkling baubles and perhaps taking in some tennis in a small stadium under high trees surrounded by perfectly manicured gardens.Who doesn’t love mixing grass court tennis and expensive jewelry?Andrew Testa for The New York TimesBoodles sponsors another high-end sports event, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, a well-heeled equestrian race, but women like tennis more, Wainwright said, and horse racing doesn’t offer the same “dwell time” that tennis does.In other words, with all of tennis’s changeovers and the breaks between sets and matches, and the fact that the matches don’t actually matter, the 10,000 patrons who come to the five days of the Boodles tennis event have plenty of time to peruse that $2.9 million diamond ring, or the more affordable $80,000 necklace. There were several cases of Patek Philippe watches on display as well.Boodles also threw an evening gala on the Stoke Park grounds for roughly 40 of its top customers Wednesday night. Wine and champagne flowed, and jewelry was sold, into the small hours of the morning.Andrey Rublev took advantage of the grass courts at Stoke Park to practice before his match.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesBorna Coric worked out after a match.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesCoric, left, and Sebastian Korda answer questions during an interview.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesFor players, the Boodles can offer an appearance fee and — just as valuable — a chance to chill. Sebastian Korda and his coach, Radek Stepanek, joined Wainwright for a round of golf earlier in the week.There is an expansive gym for the growing cohort of lifting obsessives on the tour. Perhaps most important are the moments of calm practice on the Stoke Park grass before the chaos of Wimbledon.“It’s a chance to work on a few things,” said Korda, who played in Eastbourne the week before Wimbledon last year and lost his first match.Borna Coric of Croatia, who was winless in two grass court tournaments this year, said he had arrived at Stoke Park this week harried and worried about his form. He had then climbed into bed in a luxurious room.“I had the best night of sleep I’ve had in weeks,” Coric said. More

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      Change Proved Difficult for Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship

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      Last year’s tournament was the first at a new course, Yas Links, and it proved to be a challenge, especially when the golfers played in high winds.For professional golfers it’s not familiarity that breeds contempt, it’s change. Thomas Pieters, the defending champion of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, said he was surprised by his win last year at Yas Links in the United Arab Emirates, which will host the tournament for the second straight year.“Although I won, at the beginning of the week, it wasn’t really a course I fancied or that stood out to my eye,” he said. Pieters, from Belgium, added that the previous venue, Abu Dhabi Golf Club, was a “beast of a golf course,” and that it took a “a proper ball striker to win there,” implying the opposite is true of the new venue for the championship, which begins on Thursday.The transition to Yas Links was compounded last year by strong winds during the second round of the tournament, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour, which wreaked havoc on golfers and their scores. After he finished tied for sixth last year, the defending champion, Tyrrell Hatton, told reporters on site, “I would love for a bomb to drop on it and blow it to oblivion, to be honest.”Much of Hatton’s fury was aimed at the course’s 646-yard par-5 18th hole. The long par 5 utilized the back tee box in the adverse conditions, leaving golfers no way to reach the green in two shots. “I hit a really good tee shot and still had 290 [yards to the] front,” Hatton said after the tournament. “It would be a much better finishing hole if you’re actually rewarded for hitting the fairway, which as it stands, you’re not.”Shane Lowry on the 18th hole of Yas Links during last year’s tournament. The par-5 hole proved to be a challenge for players in the windy conditions.Ryan Lim/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPieters said what made the course difficult was that it didn’t exactly play like a true links course, where firm conditions allow for players to use the ground to run the ball up onto playing surfaces.The modern professional game rewards aerial mastery, high soaring shots that land to precise yardages — a style of play that doesn’t exactly fit the design of Yas Links. Yet neither does playing it as a traditional links course, Pieters said. “It’s like playing funky links golf. You can’t really run it up on most of the greens — you have to fly it on, which makes it extra tricky.”Miguel Vidaor, the DP World Tour tournament director, said the goal for the course was to be “tough but fair.” Last year, he said, because of the wind conditions, the tournament organizers adjusted their original plans to make the course play firmer and faster.“We were on the limit all day long,” Vidaor said. “We backed off green speeds from high elevens [on the stimpmeter, a device that measures green speeds] and dropped the speed down to the mid tens. It’s an exposed golf course, and we need to be careful because there’s no shelter at all.” Vidaor and his team slowed the speeds by cutting the greens less often than usual, and watering them to allow the grass to grow overnight. Typically, tournament golf is played at a minimum speed of 11 to test players. The reduction of the speeds at Yas Links last year was a reflection of how severely the wind was blowing, which could cause balls to drift from their paths once putted.Barring conditions like the ones last year, Vidaor said he didn’t expect to change much in this year’s setup. Citing Hatton’s criticism last year, he said, “Eighteen is most unusual, but I think it’s a great par 5. It’s a three-shotter, which in the world of tournament golf, you don’t get very often these days.” He added that the course’s designer, Kyle Phillips, intended for it to play this way. Vidaor, who is a fan of Phillips’s work, said “I love a par 5 where par is a good score. Nothing wrong with that.”One of the real differences at Yas Links compared with most DP World Tour courses is its strain of grass, paspalum. Often used on seaside courses or in hot climates, it’s a drought-resistant turf that can thrive in adverse conditions, such as when sea mist falls on it. Bermuda grass, which is also often used in hot climates, can often get “grainy,” Vidaor noted, which affects shots on and around the greens, as that grain can have a grabbing effect on the ball. Paspalum, by contrast, lacks that.Also unique to Yas Links is that paspalum is the only turf grass on the property, which is slightly unusual in today’s modern agronomy at golf courses. Most courses have one type of fairway grass to account for the wear and tear of golf carts, while the greens will feature another type of grass to account for the best pure roll, as well as for the climatic conditions. The uniform quality of the course makes for a beautiful presentation, but also a uniform playing surface. “The consistency throughout the course was stunning,” Pieters said.Vidaor said that also came from controlling the mowing heights, where the grass on the greens was cut to 1.6 millimeters and the grass on the tees was cut to 3.5 millimeters. Fairways were at 6.5 millimeters. All this means that even in the desert in winter, the balls are going to move very fast and the course will have an immaculate appearance.Thomas Pieters, above, with his caddie, won last year’s tournament. Pieters said that he will enter this week’s competition with “lots of good memories from last year.”Kamran Jebreili/Associated PressPieters said that the undulations on the greens could be difficult for players to handle, and with greens running in the mid 11s, the slopes could also prove for difficult putting rounds. And even though it’s the second year for the tournament at Yas Links, Pieters added there still wasn’t the same comfort level as players had at Abu Dhabi Golf Club.“I mean, it caught everybody off guard,” he said. “We were so used to starting on the same course. We’d done our homework in past years and all of a sudden, we were given a completely different golf course.”Despite the criticism and tough conditions last year, Vidaor and the course manager, Corey Finn, will try to make the course harder. “Overall, our goal is to have firm greens as this presents a tougher challenge for the players,” Finn wrote in an email. “This year, having 12 months to prepare, we have performed more work on the greens over summer to try and achieve firmer surfaces.”Despite loving Yas Links a “little less” than the old course, Pieters said he will enter the week with “lots of good memories from last year” and feels good about his preparation, coming off a competitive layoff. “I’ve put in the work over the winter. I’m really fresh and my second daughter was born a couple months ago. So, I’m buzzed to go,” he added.Vidaor said his hopes were simple for the second year at Yas Links. “I’m really hoping that the more the guys play the course, the more they will like it,” he said. “Change is difficult for everybody. Nobody likes change.“After 16 years in the same place, it was, like, ‘Whoa, what’s this?’ But I think the more they play, I think the more they will enjoy it. And, you know, it’s a challenge. We have the best players in the world, and we want it tough.” More

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      Tending to Grass, and to Grief, on a Tennis Court in Iowa

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      Mark Kuhn is hunched over, one knee on the ground, pulling dandelions from an otherwise immaculate lawn. With a small, serrated blade, he carefully carves tiny leaves from the turf, extracting as much of their roots as he can reach, and places them in a plastic container beside him. Dandelions, I learn, are as prolific as they are stubborn.Three days earlier and some 4,000 miles away in my native England, Novak Djokovic had once again held the Wimbledon trophy aloft on the most revered court in all of tennis. Meanwhile, I was driving the 1,926 miles from my adopted home of Oakland, Calif., to be here, on this tennis court, on a farm in Northern Iowa, standing next to Mark and his weed-filled ice cream tub.I kick off my shoes and stand barefoot like a child, taking in the Midwestern summer. The grass on the soles of my feet is warm and welcoming, and the morning sun undulates on the corrugated metal of the Kuhn family’s sheds and silos. I feel like I’ve been here before.Mr. Kuhn on his court. The idea to build it first occurred to him in 1962.My memories of early childhood are mostly vague: a muted palette of inconsistency and confusion, lacking defined edges or chronology. But recollections of summers, which were spent in rural Cambridgeshire with my grandparents, are bathed in the palomino gold of the August sun on fields as far as the eye could see, and in the warmth of the love I felt there. Every afternoon, a curtain of decapitated dandelion-seed fluff, churned up by nearby combine harvesters, would fill the lattice patio window, on its way to offering seemingly infinite new beginnings.It was here I discovered tennis — albeit watching, not playing. I was a resolutely unathletic child, one of my more enduring traits. In 1997, most British households had only five television channels, two of which ran wall-to-wall Wimbledon coverage for two full weeks, every year. I would normally have been at school in late June, but it was clear to one of my more perceptive teachers — who knew that I’d struggled in recent years with my grandfather’s sudden death, and with my father’s decision to leave to start a new family — that I was deeply unhappy at home and would be better off beginning my summer break early.From the comfort and loving safety of Nan’s sofa, I quickly became invested in the progress of Tim Henman, who made it to the quarterfinals. At first, it was because there was simply nothing else on TV, and the whiff of British success at Wimbledon tends to send my country into an inexplicably contagious fever. Ultimately though, it was Henman’s dogged determination that kept me hooked. An unlikely hero, his resolve was an unexpected ember of inspiration for a lost kid who was desperately grasping for something solid to hang on to.Two tennis professionals, Kiranpal Pannu and Nathan Healey, during a practice session.A group of ball girls lines up in a shed beside the court.A breeze flutters through the six-feet-tall cornstalks. Mark tells me the corn grows so quickly this time of year that you can actually hear it. I’m not sure if he’s serious, but I furtively prick an ear, just in case. The lament of a mourning dove is accompanied by the shrill urgency of a red-winged blackbird flitting between field and power line. At ground level I hear the occasional crunch of tires on the loose gravel road beyond the farm’s perimeter. Necks craned, passers-by peer for a better view of the All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club, as spectacular as it is incongruous, and a plume of dust forms in their curious wake.Exactly 20 years ago, Mark, together with his wife Denise and their two sons, Mason and Alex, began the laborious and experimental undertaking of building a grass tennis court on their farm on the outskirts of Charles City, Iowa. It took more than a year to finish.It was the realization of a dream the reluctant third-generation farmer had held since 1962, having become enamored of Wimbledon two years previously when he heard a BBC broadcast on his grandfather’s shortwave radio. Twelve years old and absent-mindedly doing his chores, Mark noticed the cattle feedlot he was standing in was about the size of a regulation tennis court. But it wasn’t until the sudden death of a close friend, some 40 years later, that he was galvanized to try to make his far-fetched daydream a reality.Mark plays on the court occasionally, but his main source of joy lies in the rituals of preparing it for others to enjoy. The All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club — a nod to Wimbledon’s home at the All England Lawn Tennis Club — is open to whoever wants to drop Mark a line to request a reservation.Mr. Kuhn operates his greens mower.With string guiding the way, the lines on the court are painted with a titanium dioxide compound.Mr. Kuhn measures the height of the net.The week following the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, Mark is preparing to host Madison Keys, a one-time U.S. Open finalist, for an exhibition tournament benefiting her Kindness Wins Foundation.Just after sunrise, using a greens mower, Mark meticulously crops one millimeter off the top of the grass in four directions, giving the surface its distinctive stripes. Then it’s time for his favorite task: marking up the court. After aligning the edges with string, he slowly paints the tramlines — one careful step at a time, heel to toe — with a brilliant white titanium dioxide compound. The net is then dropped and pulled drum-tight, until it measures exactly three feet in the middle.Tips for Parents to Help Their Struggling TeensCard 1 of 6Tips for Parents to Help Their Struggling TeensAre you concerned for your teen? More

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      Iga Swiatek Falls at Wimbledon, Ending a Long Win Streak

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      Frustrated by low bounces on the grass courts that took away her most powerful weapons, the top-seeded women’s singles player lost in straight sets to Alizé Cornet of France.WIMBLEDON, England — Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 and the top seed at Wimbledon, did something she had not done in more than four months Saturday. She lost a tennis match.Swiatek, the 21-year-old two-time Grand Slam champion from Poland, lost in the third round to Alizé Cornet, the veteran Frenchwoman, 6-4, 6-2, ending her winning streak at 37 matches, one of the longest in modern women’s tennis.Swiatek, though, did not lose the match so much as Cornet won it, emphatically even.Playing with strapping on her left thigh, Cornet came out swinging hard, matching Swiatek’s power and taking advantage of the Polish champion’s discomfort on grass.Alizé Cornet celebrated Saturday during her straight-set victory over Swiatek.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAfter losing the first set, Swiatek seemed to right things quickly, and surged to a 2-0 lead. But Cornet reeled off six straight games with Swiatek losing the final point with a forehand into the middle of the net.Swiatek shook hands with her opponent, quickly stowed her rackets and headed for the exit of the No. 1 court, where she had been pushed to three sets by a relative unknown only two days earlier.She waved and gave a thumbs up to the crowd as she walked, then stopped to sign a series of autographs before leaving.The result had a familiar feel for Cornet. In 2014 she beat Serena Williams, then the world No. 1 and the top seed at the tournament, on the same No. 1 court.That was relatively early in her career, though. Eight years later, in just 93 minutes, she pulled off another monumental upset and made the second week of a Grand Slam for the second time this year. Then, fittingly, she compared herself to another French favorite.“Like good wine,” she told the crowd. “It ages well.”The afternoon was really about Swiatek, though.Anyone who has ever picked up a racket knows the most basic adage of the game — it is hard to win a tennis match but incredibly easy to lose one. A few errant shots, a bad quarter-hour of serving, the briefest lapses of concentration, and one set and then another slips away in what feels like minutes. Hopelessness sets in, and getting off the court as quickly as possible can feel like the best and only alternative, even though it isn’t.Hopelessness, however, was not what led to Swiatek’s demise Saturday. It was Cornet. A fearless opponent can be just as fatal.That is just part of what made Swiatek’s accomplishments during the first half of this year, in an era of women’s tennis when the competition is intense from the first round of nearly every tournament, so remarkable.Swiatek lost to Jelena Ostapenko, the free-swinging Latvian, on Feb. 16 in the quarterfinals of the Dubai Tennis Championships. Since then she has won six consecutive singles titles, including her second French Open. She won three tournaments at the Masters 1,000 level, just below the Grand Slams.In March and April she won the so-called Sunshine Double — the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif., and the Miami Open. Only three other women had done that before. At the French Open, she lost just one set. Other players talked about just trying to get past the one-hour mark on the court with her. Many failed.During her winning streak, Swiatek won the women’s singles title at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif.Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSwiatek, though, always figured the grass court season might spell the end of her streak. She is most comfortable taking balls on the rise and using her topspin and her power to put opponents on the back foot from the very first moments of the match.After she won the French Open in early June, she faced the choice of playing a warm-up tournament or two to get more comfortable on her least favorite surface or taking a break and arriving at Wimbledon feeling refreshed. She chose to rest and hoped that her cresting confidence would help her solve the puzzle of grass. It did not.In practice, her timing was off. In matches, balls skidded along the grass instead of bouncing into her strike zone, taking her most potent weapon, that topspin power, out of her quiver, forcing her to play more conservatively.On Saturday afternoon, she reverted to Plan A, trying to hit Cornet off the court. Unable to control the ball, she dropped the first three games against a player who truly believed she could do the thing that had not been done in a long while.Swiatek rallied her way onto the scoreboard, but Cornet never gave up the advantage and finished off the first set with an emphatic overhead. She then left the court before the start of the second set, leaving Swiatek to sit in her chair and ponder her fate.In the second set, Swiatek went back to Plan A and surged to a 2-0 lead, but before long she had fallen out of her groove once more. On break point in the fifth game, Cornet jumped on a second serve and laced a forehand down the line. Swiatek dropped her chin and walked to her chair for the changeover.From there, the only question was whether Cornet could stay solid enough to get across the finish line. The answer came quickly.Swiatek, bidding farewell to Wimbledon for this year, lost 12 of the last 14 points in the match. “I just didn’t know what to do,” she said.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“Usually when I’m coming back, I have some kind of a plan, and I know what to change,” Swiatek said. “Here I didn’t know. I was confused. On grass courts everything happens so quickly.”Cornet won the next three games and 12 of the final 14 points.“I didn’t tank it, but I just didn’t know what to do,” Swiatek said.Swiatek will get a bit more rest now. Before long, though, she will journey to North America for the hard court season. Clay still reigns in her mind, but after she won the Miami Open in April, two weeks after winning Indian Wells, she said hard courts were a very very close second.Another streak could be in the offing. Few would be surprised. And if not, she will always have 37. More

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      The Changing Grass at Wimbledon

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      It starts off lush, but by the second week, a lack of moisture can alter the game. Players must adjust.On the surface, Wimbledon is more steeped in tradition than any other tennis tournament, yet it undergoes more radical changes from day to day than any other Grand Slam because it is the only one played on grass. As its grass courts gradually lose their moisture and then patches of the grass itself, players must continually adjust.Fifty years ago many tournaments, including three of the four Grand Slams, were played on grass. But today, many players play only one or two grass-court tournaments before Wimbledon.“The players are on hard courts almost all year and have no doubts there, but they’re not getting many reps on grass,” said Tracy Austin, a Tennis Channel analyst who reached two semifinals and won a mixed doubles title at Wimbledon. “Players get psyched out by the grass.”As Ian Westermann, the author of “Essential Tennis,” said, “Players have to problem-solve and think on their feet.”Wimbledon used to be even more distinctive, but in a way that many fans found repetitive and boring. Grass courts play fast, and the ball stays low, so matches were once an onslaught of serve-and-volley points, which reduced the drama. In 2001, the tournament switched grasses, replacing a mix that was 70 percent ryegrass and 30 percent creeping red fescue with 100 percent ryegrass.Groundskeepers at work on Wimbledon’s Centre Court during the tournament in 2021.Pool photo by Jed LeicesterThe new lawn made the courts more durable and provided cleaner bounces, while allowing Wimbledon to keep the soil beneath drier and firmer. That yielded higher bounces and slowed the game, which Eddie Seaward, who was then the head groundskeeper, acknowledged was needed for the good of the sport.The serve-and-volley quickly fell from favor. Craig O’Shannessy, the director of the Brain Game Tennis website, said that, in 2002, 33 percent of the men’s points featured that approach, but three years later, that number had dropped to 19 percent. Since 2008, the serve-and-volley has been used 5 to 10 percent of the time.But O’Shannessy cited statistics revealing that even as usage fell, the serve-and-volley remained a winning tactic: Two-thirds of serve-and-volley points were won by men, a figure that has not varied for two decades. O’Shannessy cited a “herd mentality” for abandoning the tactic and said players should attack more frequently.Austin said rallying is now part of Wimbledon. She said that as changes in strings and playing styles gave returners more weapons against the serve-and-volley, players began engaging in baseline rallies on the grass.Serve-and-volley “is successful because it’s not predictable,” she said, adding that players no longer learn or practice the serve-and-volley style, so they’re not comfortable doing it often.Wimbledon still requires a different skill set and mind-set from the other Grand Slams. While there are longer baseline rallies now, Westermann said, “grass places a premium on first-strike tennis. You just have to take your shot.”Patrick McEnroe, an ESPN analyst, said that players in his day had to charge the net immediately because service returns otherwise stayed too low, but that now the ball was more likely to come up high enough for the server to hit an aggressive ground stroke.“It’s easier to hit a first ball from the middle of the court with your forehand than with a volley,” McEnroe said. “And a mediocre volley is likely to bounce higher now, giving your opponent more of a chance to hit a passing shot.”Austin said that “serve-plus-one” style wasn’t always feasible without a big serve, but McEnroe said players should focus on “taking the ball early and moving forward” to win the point in one or two shots.Westermann said big servers still could go further in Wimbledon than on other Grand Slam surfaces, and McEnroe added that the wide slice serve was especially effective because it is harder to reach and harder to recover from on the low, fast court.Additionally, Wimbledon favors players who can hit through the court with hard, flat ground strokes. Topspin, the shot that brought Rafael Nadal endless success on clay, is less effective here because the deadened bounce leaves the ball in an opponent’s comfort zone.To optimize the lower bounce, Austin and McEnroe said the slice backhand — important to Roger Federer’s Wimbledon glory — was an essential weapon. “The slice stays so low and the spin is even more squirrelly on grass, especially because there are still uneven bounces there,” Austin said.More than other surfaces, grass rewards players who can improvise off low or bad bounces, McEnroe said. “Clay requires more point construction, but on grass, the advantage is to the superior technical players who have the best racket skills,” he said.Ashleigh Barty celebrated after winning her Wimbledon singles final last year against Karolina Pliskova. In the second week of the tournament, players must deal with the grass as it turns to dust and dirt.Pool photo by Ben QueenboroughThe bounces are lower and the ball moves slower in the first week, O’Shannessy said, because there is more water in the blades of grass. “Your butt and hamstrings will be way more sore playing on grass from getting down low,” he said.That moisture also causes players to slip on the run, Austin said, adding that “it gets in their head” as they worry about potential injuries.McEnroe said players can’t just explode and run all out. “Your feet have to be light, and while you run, you have to think, ‘How am I going to stop?’” he said.As the second week begins, the grass dries out and the soil hardens — barring rain — producing a higher bounce, making topspin more effective.As second-week regulars, returning players have an edge, O’Shannessy said: They are experienced in dealing with the grass as it turns to dust and dirt. “You’re often moving between two different surfaces, and if you’re not used to it, that can be difficult,” he said.The dirt surrounding the baseline where the players hit many of their shots not only changes the bounce again, but it also becomes slippery. “Complaining about the dirt is another Wimbledon tradition,” Westermann said.While it might be tempting for players to back up for better footwork and time to adjust to the bounces, he said, that tactic just allows opponents to go on the offensive.“Players instead need to double down and take the ball early,” he said. “Players who are confident and aggressive will be rewarded.” More

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      In Abu Dhabi, Turning the Desert Into a World-Class Golf Course

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      At the Yas Links, water management is vital, as is the type of grass used. It must tolerate saltwater.Yas Links Abu Dhabi, which is hosting the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship starting this week, is no mirage. Like other courses in the Middle East, it is a testament to man overtaking nature in harsh conditions.What players and fans will see is a course, ranked among the top 50 in the world by Golf Digest, that appears to have been unearthed from the desert sand, but, in fact, was the handiwork of the architect Kyle Phillips. The course was built on land bordering the Persian Gulf, and Phillips worked to make that coastline look like, well, a coastline.“The idea was to protect the large mangrove area by dredging away from it and maintaining it,” Phillips said. That was accomplished by making the channel (by the course) wider and more open between the mangroves and the ocean, then building land forms that echo those of the original links courses in Scotland.But the biggest challenge, Phillips said, was working in the heat. Summer temperatures regularly hit more than 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), but the humidity can reach about 86 percent. Sandstorms, like something from a movie, also appear he said. He also noted that the golf course was a speck in the total development of Yas Island.“This went from a barren island to seven hotels, the marina, the Ferrari theme park and the Formula 1 track, too,” Phillips said of the development that began in 2006 and finished in 2018.Clinton Southorn, director of construction and agronomy of Troon International, which manages the course, said it was a “literal oasis.”But that oasis takes maintenance, and the high salinity of the water used to help the grass grow, Southorn said, makes the impossible happen.“From an agronomy point of view, you can’t grow grass here,” he said. “But this tells you about Mother Nature and how it can adapt and how with technology and tools, and the right skills in place, you can sort of change that.”Southorn also said the consistency of the weather helped.“We can put an application down, such as an herbicide, we don’t need to worry about a storm coming through and washing it all away. On the flip side, there’s no rain.”In that climate and environment, taking care of the turf is complicated by the use of water in Abu Dhabi, said Corey Finn, the course manager. He said the potable water of the United Arab Emirates was acquired through desalination, but the golf course uses the recycled water of the nearby hotels and buildings.This poorer quality water poses challenges for Finn, but the entire process relies on six specialists who ensure that pipes are not leaking, sprinklers are not blocked and that the system shuts off as asked by its computer system.That system also allows Finn and his team to measure the amount of water the course receives. Measurements are taken each morning, and the data is sent to a cloud server that overlays the usage on a map of each green, allowing them to adjust the usage.To aid in this endeavor, the course uses paspalum, a type of grass that thrives in salty water. Because of how Yas Links must take care of its turf, its strain of paspalum suffers when it rains.To maintain high-quality turf, Finn said, they often have to add more water to flush the salt and minerals from the soil, and this sometimes allows them to wait a week before watering again.The challenge for the tournament, which moved across town from Abu Dhabi Golf Club after 16 years there, is twofold. Southorn said paspalum was a sticky grass that could grab the ball and posed a challenge to golfers who did not often play on this type of surface. And for the club, while the greens and fairways are all paspalum, making mowing easier, the tournament arrives during winter and at the height of tourist season, when the course receives its most play, putting added stress on the grass.“So we’re doing 150 to 200 rounds a day, which is 100 golf carts rolling over the grass,” Southorn said.Courses that hold professional tournaments must balance a one-week showcase event versus the 51 weeks they host guests, but it’s not often those courses hold tournaments when their grass is its most vulnerable. But Finn said the grass would be where it needed to be for the tournament.“Everywhere you turn on a golf course there is a challenge one way or another. What our team goes through every summer is pretty amazing,” he said about working in the heat, “and we have to manage, and not just the grass. We have to manage ourselves as well.” More