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    How Do Wimbledon’s Grass Courts Keep Dry in All the Rain?

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    The court services crews at the All England Club deploy 18 tarps at a time to keep precious grass courts dry. They’re not above fetching a player a banana or a soft drink, either.High atop the outer south wall of Centre Court at Wimbledon, a small rectangle has been cut away in the lush, green ivy, revealing a digital number that few, if any, of the 42,000 spectators entering the grounds each day of the tournament ever notice.Similar to coastal warning pennants, it is a signal system — from 1 to 8 — issued from Wimbledon’s own crack meteorology department, for the tarpaulin crews to stand by or rush into action. A “1” means possible showers. A “2” means the chair umpire has the discretion to halt the match. On Saturday, when the first rain drops fell on an already rain-soaked Wimbledon, the signal clicked to “4” from “3.”Instantly, Richard “Winston” Sedgwick, standing on the last row of Court No. 3, where he could see across to the digital beacon on Centre Court, used a simple hand signal to relay the information to the crews, which rushed to action. A six-member team ran onto the court, grabbed purple cords to unwrap an 8,000-square-foot tarpaulin and hauled it over the court in about one minute, with the captains shouting out instructions heard all about the grounds, similar to rowing teams: “Three, two, one, pull,” and “Stay together. Again!”“There’s pressure to get it done properly,” Sedgwick said. “If you don’t, they can’t play. So we have to work really hard and really fast.”The members of the covering crews are arguably the most important people at Wimbledon, their swift, precise action protecting the delicate grass, allowing tennis to continue on each of the 18 courts at what is usually the rainiest Grand Slam event of the year.It is a physical job, requiring a certain degree of athleticism, and if there is a day with intermittent showers and the tarp goes on and off several times, by the end of that day, the physical toll renders the crews “shattered,” Sedgwick said.A small digital readout above Centre Court showed a “1,” which indicated all clear to the court crews at Wimbledon.George Spring, a cattle farmer in New South Wales, Australia, has been Wimbledon’s court services manager for 22 years, overseeing the entire process. It begins when his wife, Louise, recruits the several dozen university students who form the crews. In all, 200 people work on the court services crews over the two-week tournament.They train for four days before the tournament, including a pair of half days on court, where they learn and practice how to pull the tarps on, take them off, and set up the nets and the rest of the court for play once the rain stops.Movements must be in concert, and the crews rehearse their ballet well before the first ball is struck.“It’s like sporting teams,” Spring said. “If you’ve got a good captain and good leadership, you’ll be in good shape.”The crews have been especially important at this Wimbledon, where rain has interrupted five of the first six days. It has created havoc with the schedule and forced many players to work on back-to-back days, which is never the plan at a two-week event like Wimbledon. Through the first six days, 96 matches were suspended, including 34 on Wednesday and 30 on Saturday. Several doubles teams had not even played their first matches by Saturday.And this is not even the rainiest Wimbledon — not even close.“I was here in 2007, where it was famous for rain,” Spring said. “There wasn’t a day we didn’t pull a cover on the courts.”George Spring, the court services manager at Wimbledon, stayed in touch with the tournament’s meteorology department on Saturday.The two main show courts, Centre Court and No. 1 Court, have retractable roofs, but the crews still deploy even larger tarps, requiring 20 people vs. the six on the outer courts, while the roofs are closing. Centre Court is the only one with full-time Wimbledon employees on the job.The court services crews arrive at 7:30 a.m. and work until about 10:30 p.m. each day. Tarps can be slippery and heavy and people are moving fast, so occasionally a crew member sprains an ankle or tweaks a muscle.On No. 1 Court, Elinor Beazley, who grew up in Wales and played tennis for Northern Arizona University (she is transferring to Youngstown State this fall), has been pulling the tarp for two years.Last year was a mostly sunny affair, and she found herself hoping for rain just to get into the action. When it arrived, the adrenaline began to pump.“I was so nervous,” she said. “The crowd was screaming and I was getting really bubbly on my toes. It’s so exciting and such a fun experience. It’s a bit of a performance doing it in front of all those people.”When she got back to Arizona, she said, she told her teammates, “All of you need to come to Wimbledon. You watch the best tennis in the world up close, and it’s like being on a team.”The court services crews are also responsible for other tasks, like holding umbrellas over the heads of the players during changeovers and providing them with towels and drinks, but they can fulfill other unique requests, too. Spring said that a player once asked for a soft drink, which is not part of the usual sports-hydration liquids available on each court. Spring went to the concession stand, bought a soda and brought it back.One year, when the bananas kept on hand for players were too green, Spring said, he sent a crew member to a grocery store in Wimbledon town on a bicycle to procure ripe ones. Rafael Nadal, who did not play this year, likes a particular kind of dried date, which Spring gets from the commissary on the grounds. On Saturday night, there was a request for room-temperature water.But the most important job is getting those tarps on and off the courts quickly and completely. When the digital beacons (there are a few, posted on both sides of Centre Court and on the outer walls of No. 1 Court) flashes a “5,” it is the call to inflate the tarp. After a crew has secured the tarp with large clips, blowers inflate it from the corners. Within seconds a dome, 6 feet high in the center, is formed, like a giant bouncy castle. If the rain is expected to pass quickly, the tarp is not inflated at all.The tarp is inflated on Court No. 3 during a rain delay Saturday at Wimbledon.A “6” means deflate; “7” is the call to uncover and roll up the tarp, which can weigh two tons when it is wet, Spring said. When it is secured, an “8” will flash, which means it is time to dress the courts — replace the nets, set up the chairs and distribute the towels and drinks for the players.Colored cords wrapped inside the rolled-up tarp make it all much simpler. The crew members pull purple ones to unfurl the tarp in the rain and green ones to roll it back up when the skies clear. The entire uncovering process, including setting up the nets, takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes.At night, the crews put the tarps back on again. On Saturday, play was suspended on all of the outer courts because of the rain. When it stopped, the crews pulled the tarps off again, but only for less than an hour. The tarp pullers were so efficient in keeping the court dry that the grass had to be watered at the end of the day.Spring said that in all his years, there have been a few times where malfunctions caused delays of an hour or so, but never for a whole day.“That is probably why I’m still here,” he said.And at Wimbledon, so is the rain. More

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      Golfers Battered By Rain At The PGA Championship

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      Driving rain on Saturday at the P.G.A. Championship forced some golfers to buck the usual country club sartorial norms in order to keep the water out of their eyes.PITTSFORD, N.Y. — For a while during the third round of the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler, Justin Rose, Adam Scott and three or four other golfers were roaming the august grounds of the Oak Hill Country Club with their caps on backward.“It makes me feel cool,” Rose said. “Young. Hip.”The attire at the 105th playing of the P.G.A. Championship on Saturday did not mark a revolution toward relaxed golf mores. Although, it is also true that the back-turned caps — not the norm in professional golf — did not draw penalties, hoots or disqualifications either, so maybe some welcomed informality is brewing in golf after all.The world’s best golfers were experimenting with the best use of their headgear because of a relentless, driving rainstorm that pounded the Oak Hill Country Club throughout the day.Bryson DeChambeau kept a towel to dry his hands hanging from his umbrella.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesSo, Rose, 42, was not trying to remake his image. That was him making a joke. He wore his cap backward because it had become soaked with rain and when he put his head down to hit the golf ball, beads of water drip, drip, dripped past his eyes and onto his ball.“It actually put me off a little bit,” Rose said. “And at the top of my backswing, I had a couple of droplets fall down and it distracted me. I thought, this is annoying me, so let’s flip it.”McIlroy offered the same explanation, although he and Rose both conceded that they had not worn their hat backward at a major golf championship before.It is a known remedy on sloppy, rainy days, one seen regularly during bad weather at municipal golf courses, but the look was a little jarring when exhibited by the world’s best golfers.And in case you were wondering, a spokeswoman for the P.G.A. of America, which conducts the P.G.A. Championship, confirmed that there is a player dress code, but apparently, wearing your cap backward does not violate the code because no golfer was penalized or pulled off the course.Spectators dressed for the elements to take in the rain-soaked third round.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesIn fact, Rose, Scheffler, McIlroy and Justin Suh, who was another backward hat rebel, were each in the top 10 entering Sunday’s final round, so maybe they knew something that most of the other golfers did not.The soaked hats brigade was the most obvious example of the many adjustments that all the golfers in the field had to make because of Saturday’s rainstorm.The rough weather also highlighted the role of the relationship between players and their caddies. Nothing is more complex than the umbrella handoff between players and caddies that happens thousands of times — almost always in the same sequence — during a rainy round. It is either comical or the epitome of efficient, unspoken coordination.Usually in the fairway, in full view of the gallery of fans, it goes like this:The player holds an umbrella over his head and over his bag while the caddie marches around in the pouring rain trying to figure out the distance of the player’s next shot to the green. When the caddie returns, the player hands the umbrella to him and selects a club from the bag. The caddie dries the club’s grip with a towel hanging from the interior spokes of the umbrella. When the player walks toward his ball in the fairway, the caddie holds the umbrella over the player’s head — but not his own head. This protection of the player is offered until just seconds before he begins his swing at the ball. That’s when the caddie steps to the side. At that moment, the caddie makes sure he’s holding the umbrella over the player’s golf bag, because keeping the bag dry is more important than keeping the caddie dry.Once the ball is struck, the player hands his club to the caddie and the caddie hands over the umbrella. The player heads toward his ball, leaving the caddie to walk in the rain behind him, unprotected.Brooks Koepka, right, and his caddie perform the intricate umbrella exchange. Desiree Rios/The New York TimesOr as Jon Rahm, the world’s top ranked golfer, said on Saturday: “I can just take the umbrella and go. He sacrifices.”But Rahm appreciates his caddie, Adam Hayes, and knows what he endures.“The bottom of the bag today had about two inches of water in it,” he said. “And his clothes were soaked through. He must be carrying about 35 pounds of water on him right now. His job is extra important on a rainy day.”Stephan Jaeger, whose golf bag contained seven towels and other gear to get through a nearly five-hour round in the rain, said he thought his bag weighed 70 pounds on Saturday. The entire experience — the ongoing umbrella exchange, wiping the rain off the bill of his cap, trying to determine how many yards the wet grass would impede a shot — had left Jaeger, who was tied for 10th, exhausted.“It’s a lot of effort,” he said minutes after walking off the golf course. “I think I’m going to feel it once I sit down and calm down. I think the adrenaline will wear off a little bit, and I’m going to be pretty tired. It’s a lot of thinking, a lot to consider.”Jaeger was asked if he ever practiced in the rain between tournaments to get used to the experience.Jaeger answered immediately: “No.” More

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      A Rare Rainout Suspends Players Championship With Three Tied for Lead

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      Torrential rains flooded the fairways at T.C.P. Sawgrass, a course that already features multiple water hazards. The tournament won’t end before Monday.PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — This year’s Players Championship, a signature event of the PGA Tour, will take an extra day to complete after torrential rains on Friday in northern Florida suspended play for a second consecutive day. Golfers endured Friday’s foul weather for only a few soggy hours at the T.P.C. Sawgrass golf course, one day after the first round was twice interrupted by rain delays and never completed.The back-to-back postponements will ensure that the 72-hole, four-round tournament, scheduled to end on Sunday afternoon, will not finish before Monday for the first time since 2005.Large puddles had become common on most greens by 10 a.m. on Friday, and maintenance crews used squeegees to remove water after each group finished a hole. But in time, with fairways all but flooded, officials ordered players off the course. The first round is still not complete.“The golf course has just reached a point of saturation, and unfortunately the weather conditions are not providing us any relief,” Gary Young, the chief referee of the event, said late Friday afternoon.Young added that the golf course had received almost three inches of rain in the previous 36 to 48 hours and that the tournament will restart no sooner than 11 a.m. on Saturday. The third round will not be completed Sunday, and severe weather was expected in the area Friday night into Saturday morning, including wind gusts that could reach 60 miles an hour. But the tour is anticipating clearer weather by midday Saturday even though the T.P.C. Sawgrass layout will most likely still be subject to considerable wind.The conditions, coupled with a challenging Pete Dye-designed course that features multiple daunting shots over water hazards, could make for unpredictable results. Moreover, the final-round leaders will be forced to complete more than 18 holes on Monday.On Friday morning, Young said the tour was potentially considering a Tuesday finish to the event, but hours later he said, “We feel very confident that we’re going to be able to accomplish the conclusion of this championship on Monday evening.” A last round on Tuesday was “not really in our thought process,” Young said.It is the eighth time that the Players Championship, which was first contested in 1974, will not finish on Sunday. While Monday finishes are infrequent on the PGA Tour and at major championships — the last Monday finish at the Masters tournament was 1983 — they are not unheard-of, and players have generally learned to adapt.“You just know that you’re here hopefully until the very end of the tournament, and you just get on with it,” said Tommy Fleetwood, who was one of a few dozen golfers to complete 18 holes on Thursday and is tied for the lead at six under par. “Everybody’s in the same circumstances. When it’s your turn to play, you play.“It’s easy to get caught off guard when you’re hanging around for a long time and then all of a sudden you have to try to switch it back on. But you almost have to relax as much as you can and save your energy but always kind of stay ready and in that mind-set that you might be going out at any time,” Fleetwood said. More