In recent years, Bercy has been the odd Masters out. It comes 11 months into the season, and it follows not just the U.S. Open, but the Asian swing that sends the players to the other side of the world just a few weeks earlier. Worse, it's staged just before the season-ending championships, an event that the Top 8 players value more. For those who have qualified for the season-ender, Paris is, essentially, in the way.
That’s what made last year’s edition of the tournament such a pleasant surprise. There was entertaining, aggressive play through much of the week, and it culminated in two classic semifinals on Saturday. One hometown boy, Gael Monfils, saved match points in beating Roger Federer for the first time, while another local, Michael Llodra, went down to a heartbreaking defeat after squandering his own match points against Robin Soderling. Even those of us who wish for a shorter, saner schedule had to admit that we were happy to still be watching tennis that November day.
Part of the reason that afternoon was so special was the excitable Parisian crowd. Two of their own were trying to do something unprecedented—Monfils had never beaten Federer, while the aging Llodra had never reached a Masters final. But another reason was something much quieter—the court itself. Organizers at Bercy had upped the speed of the surface, from a 38 “pace rating” to a 45. Player reaction seemed positive to start. Federer and Andy Murray approved, while Andy Roddick said it would make for "proper indoor tennis."
And that's what it did. Variety, creativity, forays to the net: They were up across the board. You didn’t have to look any farther than the surprise semifinalist, Llodra, to see the results. The net-rushing doubles specialist angled his way through the draw; his style, compared to what we see most days on tour, was the proverbial breath of fresh air, and proof that the serve-and-volley is still an option for any young talent willing to learn it. When the event was over, Bercy tournament director Jean-Francois Caujolle maintained that he was happy with how his surface experiment had turned out.
So what did Caujolle and company do this time? They retreated, to a standard, medium-paced indoor court. Player complaints were cited, as well as a desire to use something closer to what’s used at the World Tour Finals in London in two weeks (next year, the week between them will be eliminated). Roddick, for one, didn’t seem pleased by the switch, while Murray said it's “very, very slow” now. Federer didn't mind, though, saying that the transition to the rubber surface used in London would be easier. So far, through the event’s first three days, I haven’t seen a lot of net-rushing; there was more of it at the last Masters, in Shanghai, which has also adopted a quicker-than-normal surface. (This could also be linked, as Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said, to the balls being used in Bercy.) As for Llodra, he lost in the first round to Feliciano Lopez this year, though he can hardly blame the surface. He choked away the first-set tiebreaker and never recovered. That can happen anywhere.
If I had to choose one surface to use all season, I would take a medium-paced hard court over an especially fast one. The specter of those terminal rock-fight serving contests between Pete Sampras and Goran Ivanisevic at Wimbledon will never completely leave my mind. I like rallies, and I like today’s game. Beyond that, slower surfaces aren’t the only culprit, or even the primary culprit, in the decline of net play. Powerful racquets, Western grips, two-handed backhands, and a junior instructional model developed at the Bollettieri Academy have all done their part. But a faster court does encourage offense.
The slowing trend is also not new. It began all the way back in 1988 when the Australian Open went from grass to high-bouncing Rebound Ace. It continued when Wimbledon switched its own ragged turf to something firmer in 2001, while outdoor hard courts generally began to slow down around the same time. And I don’t think anyone can complain about the state of men’s tennis in the years since. Still, any casual observer would also recognize that most ATP players are cut from very similar cloth these days. Most hug and slug from the baseline, and play with a safe, solid mix of offense and defense—Novak Djokovic is the state of this art right now, and the U.S. Open final that he played against Rafael Nadal was the best example yet of how far we’ve come. Rock fights have turned to marathons.
Tennis is virtually unique in its variety of playing surfaces. Grass games and clay games used to be very different things. Bercy was right last year to try to re-inject a little of that variety. There will be exciting matches this week, even on the slower surface, especially if Djokovic, Federer, and Murray stick around. And moving from one type of court in Paris to a very different one in London will be even tougher next year, when the two events are back to back. Bercy may not be the best place for this experiment anymore, but it's not much of a leap from being the odd Masters out to being a trendsetter. Somewhere, sometime, tennis could use the jolt.