Ex 2-times Slam winner rips the Wimbledon grass-courts

06/17/2024 01:00 PM

The Grass is Greener, was the title of a famous 1960 film starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but at the Wimbledon Championships, in recent years, the green lawns of the All England Club are deteriorating more and more quickly during the days of the tournament . Cause of climate change but also of the continuous annoying slowdown of the playing surface. The grass of the past at Wimbledon was decidedly different from that of today, slower and allowing long rallies, which were once less frequent. Serve & volley by players is less and less used and many, including tennis players, media fans and insiders, would like to see a return to a faster surface, where offensive play is encouraged.

This is also what the former Russian tennis player Yevgeny Kafelnikov, former ATP No.1 in the world and winner of two Slam singles tournaments, thinks about his career. Kafelnikov harshly attacked the Wimbledon tournament, and it is a controversy that has been recurring since there was a change to the grass courts on which the London tournament is played with a slowdown of the surface. Of course, we are talking about a grass that it's completely differente respect that of '90s.

Kafelnikov, who won the 1996 Roland Garros and the 1999 Australian Open - while he never particularly shone at Wimbledon with only the quarter-finals obtained in 1995 as his best result - wrote a post two weeks before the start of the tournament has created widespread debate. Ironically aimed at the agronomists of the third Slam of the season - starting this year on Monday 1 July with the final to be played on Sunday 14 July - but in fact directed at those who make decisions related to how to prepare the grass pitches of the most prestigious tournament in the world .

"When will Wimbledon's agronomists put the courts back to the way they were before? The time has come because we need to see players serving and volleying again!" he wrote

When do Wimbledon agronomists make courts back the way they used to be? About time that we need to see serve and volley style players again😉

— Kafelnikov Yevgeny (@KYevgeni) June 15, 2024