Roger Federer kicks off court speed debate: are fast courts going extinct?

Some debates in tennis take place so deep in the weeds of policy or administration that they’re of little interest to all but the most geeked-out aficionados. But that changes when an icon wades into the fray, at which point the issue may suddenly generate headlines and become digital fodder for everyone.

That’s what happened just a few weeks ago, and suddenly the long-simmering complaint that the game has been slowed down too much, especially on hard courts, has popped high on the radar.

Near the end of a long, live broadcast of Andy Roddick’s Served podcast from the Laver Cup event, tournament founder Roger Federer enthusiastically embraced Roddick’s suggestion that courts had been slowed down to the detriment of the game.

Federer then lit the tinder, suggesting that tournament directors like slow courts because it increases the odds that Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz (preferably both) will arrive in the final. Alexander Zverev heaped fuel on the ensuing fire soon thereafter, revealing how he “hated” how uniform surfaces had become, and he endorsed Federer’s theory of favoritism.

The next thing you know Sinner, halfway around the world, was addressing the criticism in a press conference in Beijing. “You know, me and Carlos [Alcaraz], we don’t make the courts,” he told reporters. “It’s not our decision. We try to adapt ourselves in every situation. I still feel like every week (the surface) is a bit different.”

The favoritism issue, while legitimate, has overshadowed the original point, that we’re losing one of the game’s most distinguishing features—meaningful differences in surface/court speed from one event (or tour segment) to another, and the unique challenges that poses for players. The criticism is valid, in that the ATP and WTA surfaces these days range from slow to medium-fast. The high end has been loped off.

Over time, tennis has developed a prejudice against fast courts. It was partly due to those serving duels hosted by Wimbledon in the pre-2001 years, before it switched the surface to a rougher (slower) ryegrass. Changes continued: In 2008, the ITF put pace limitations on courts that could be used by host nations in Davis Cup ties. When Cup stalwart Roddick learned that a certain, commonly used court was rated as “too fast” for official DC competition, he asked how the ITF determined if a court was “too slow.”

There was no such category, he was told. Point made.

Unfortunately, there is no commonly embraced or understood yardstick for court speed, and the entire business can become very confusing if you venture down the data rabbit hole.

The ITF does a sophisticated Court Pace Rating (CPR) based on laboratory and actual on-site testing with various scientific instruments. It groups those ratings in five categories, just like hurricanes: The five categories range from slow to fast, with 10-point gradations within each, topping out at 50.

Thus, a French Open rating of, say, 23, falls into category 2 (slow, but not extremely so) while a typical Australian Open rating of 42 puts it in the medium-fast category 4. By CPR metrics, most hard-court Masters events in 2024 fell into the "medium" or "medium-fast" categories of 3 to 5, Paris leading the way with a CPR of 45.5 (category 5). The Indian Wells Masters nestled in alongside Roland Garros in category 2.

The other way to establish a quantifiable court speed is “predictive,” based on data-driven, match-play metrics including aces, unreturned serve, rally length. Broadcasters rely on researchers and entities like Hawkeye to create a more dynamic Court Pace Index (CPI), showing the real-world result of surface speed. These ratings generally align with CPR values.

The Tennis Abstract website has its own surface speed rating, also created by match-play metrics and statistics. It uses the number “1” to represent average court speed. By TA metrics, the 15 fastest tournaments (led by Basel, with a rating of 1.54) include only two Masters events (Paris Indoor, No. 7 and Cincinnati Masters, No. 15).

I tend to disagree with the claim that courts are getting slower across the board. It just seems to me that some get faster and maybe some are slower. John Isner

The metrics used by TA are complicated, but the easiest way to frame it is that at Basel, players hit 54 percent more aces than at an average tournament.

But for all the number crunching, those who count most (the players) frequently experience court speed subjectively. Their opinions on a specific court often end up all over the board, heavily influenced by considerations ranging from ambient conditions to how well—or badly—an individual happens to be playing. A court that seems too fast to one player might be right in the comfort zone of another's.

For all the palaver about slow courts, many players claimed that the courts at the Citi Open in Washington D.C. this year were much faster than usual. After advancing to the third round, Frances Tiafoe described the conditions as ideal for a "servebot-fest.”

Similar observations were made at the Canada Masters, where Taylor Fritz described the courts as "lightning-fast.” Meanwhile, most players agreed that the courts at the Cincinnati Masters were significantly slower than in previous years. The US Open was a toss-up, as far as opinions went.

John Isner, the godfather of servebots, logged some of his best Grand Slam results in Paris—and not indoors, but at Roland Garros. He can explain how slow courts counter-intuitively help big and tall players who serve better than they move. Taking on Zverev’s disenchantment with the perceived uniformity of court speeds in the Nothing Major podcast recently, Isner said: “I tend to disagree with the claim that courts are getting slower across the board. It just seems to me that some get faster and maybe some are slower.”

Note to Roger: perhaps it’s time to speed up those Laver Cup courts, even if the days of lightning fast indoor and outdoor courts are a thing of the past.