Casper Ruud, the three-time Grand Slam tournament finalist, took an unconventional approach in preparing for Wimbledon, widely considered tennis’s most prestigious tournament.
That included attending more concerts with his favorite singer, The Weeknd, than playing actual tennis matches on grass.
Unsurprisingly, Liam Broady, a 29-year-old journeyman from Great Britain and ranked No. 142 in the world, knocked out Ruud in the second round on Thursday. Ruud, ranked No. 4 in the world, agreed. “He’s a much better grass player than me,” Ruud said of Broady.
There was a time when many of the best tennis players made success at Wimbledon the focus of their season and some considered their careers incomplete unless they had won at the cradle of the sport. Everyone from Rod Laver to Martina Navratilova has said they came to Wimbledon to reconnect with the sport’s roots.
Today, with the other three Grand Slam tournaments gaining prominence and the grass season becoming a quirky, roughly month-long detour from the rest of the tennis calendar, many top players find neither the time nor the mind free to make it a priority, well to be lawn. If it costs her tennis immortality, so be it.
As blasphemous as it may seem, for many players, including the greats, Wimbledon has become just another Grand Slam tournament.
“I don’t know if winning Wimbledon is more important in my opinion than winning the US Open or the Australian Open,” said former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka. “These are all very important tournaments.”
Wimbledon is partly to blame. In the early 2000s, as racquet and string technology continued to improve, helping players hit the ball with renewed vigor, Wimbledon began seeding its pitches entirely with perennial ryegrass, rather than the previously used mix of ryegrass and red fescue . The change made the courts more durable and provided cleaner, higher bounce, making the surfaces feel more like a hard court than a rusty ice rink.
Around the same time, the French Open were making their courts harder and faster, essentially dying out the clay-court specialist who won in Paris but nowhere else. Within a few years, the game at the four Grand Slam tournaments had become more similar than different. The same players began to win almost all of them, and the accumulation of Grand Slam tournament titles throughout their careers became the dominant tennis narrative, rather than who could win that august title in front of members of the British royal family in their box.
However, it remains true that lawn tennis is different from all other tennis and the All England Club continues to have many fans.
They include almost all British players, many of whom grew up chasing tennis balls on the grass at their local clubs, and Novak Djokovic, who is now considered the greatest player of the Open era that began in 1968. He marks the beginning of his tennis life by watching Wimbledon on TV as a young boy. Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, both top Americans, said they wish the grass season lasted longer because it suited their style and had a purity about it.
Bob Bryan, the US Davis Cup captain and winner of four Wimbledon doubles titles, said nothing gave the creeps like walking through the wrought-iron gates of the All England Club.
“It’s the holy grail of sport,” Bryan said. “There is nothing like it.”
Yes, but that damn turf — that classic surface that used to host three of the four Grand Slam tournaments — has practically disappeared from the sport.
Daniil Medvedev from Russia said he had always loved Wimbledon – the flowers, all the perfect color and in just the right place; the food; the luxurious changing rooms. But then you have to play on grass, which can make even the best of the best feel like they’re terrible at tennis.
“If you lose, you go crazy,” said Medvedev. “You’re like, ‘No, I played so badly.'”
Stefanos Tsitsipas spent part of the interregnum between the French Open and Wimbledon posting on social media from luxurious venues with his new ‘soul mate’ Paula Badosa of Spain, a star of the Women’s Tour, rather than training on grass.
He said winning on clay, particularly at the French Open, left him feeling dismal, dirty and best of all exhausted. On grass, he said, it can feel clean and a little empty, although he looked a far cry from that Friday after he beat Andy Murray, one of the sport’s greatest grass players, on center court.
There is another problem for the men. Djokovic has been so good here for so long, having won the last four Wimbledon men’s singles titles, seven in total and 31 games in a row – that the rest of the field sometimes ask, why?
“He seems to be getting better,” said Lorenzo Musetti, the up-and-coming Italian who, somewhat to his surprise, has only recently started winning on grass. He said he struggled there because he could get up everywhere else and run away with the ball. At Wimbledon, despite the new turf, the ball stays so low that players basically stay crouched for three hours, using their feet and calf and thigh muscles to power their movements, like ski racers skiing down a slope. That may be one of the reasons Djokovic excels – he was an outstanding skier before he went all-in to tennis – and many great players don’t understand the demands of grass.
Women fight too. Iga Swiatek – the world No. 1 who never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon – said her deep runs at the French Open, which she has won over the past two years, prevented her from getting enough time to Having rest and playing games to get used to the unpredictable jumps on the lawn. She said she had considered training on grass during the off-season in November and December but concluded it would not prepare her for the Australian Open in January.
“I don’t really think about it all year long,” she said of lawn prep.
Alexander Davidovich Fokina, a Spaniard who is both promising and dangerous on clay and hard courts, said he struggled with his confidence as soon as he stepped onto the grass.
“It’s just really, really hard,” he said.
Then there’s Andrey Rublev, another Russian who described grass court as an insane, fear-inducing form of tennis, with short rallies and results that might seem illogical.
“You feel so confident and then you go on the court and the guy, he does four aces, two returns, unreal – out of nowhere he breaks you and the set is over,” Rublev said. “And maybe sometimes you feel super tense like I can’t move, I can’t put a ball in the field. And then the guy makes two double faults and the ball hits the frame of your racquet and goes in, you break it and then you win a set.”
Medvedev doesn’t even think that taking part in the preliminary grass tournaments makes much of a difference as the grass is different in Germany, the Netherlands and different places in England. He said that the All England Club’s pitches were played extremely fast and that the pitches at the stadium were slow.
Will he ever feel at home on the pitch? After his second-round win on Friday, he said he might be closer.
“Maybe at the door,” he said. “Not inside, but at the door.”
As for Ruud, after his defeat he said he would keep trying but that victory at Wimbledon might not be in sight. Every time he lashes out with his deadly forehand, he feels like he’s about to fall and injure himself from the way he lands, then push off to pursue the next punch.
He took part in the men’s doubles tournament, which allows him to stay around for a while longer before returning to clay court tennis in Europe later this month.
He may have a motivation outside of tennis. The Weeknd was due to play in London this weekend.