Clay court of many colors: How American tennis gets ready for the real deal at home

DANIEL ISLAND, S.C. — Jessica Pegula nearly bailed Wednesday afternoon. The sight of the crafty, motivated Yulia Putintseva glowering across the net is a foreboding one for any tennis player, at any time. For Pegula, defending a title at the Charleston Open and playing her first match of one of the biggest transitions in every tennis season, it was even more of a nightmare.

“All I kept thinking was like, we’re into clay-court season,” Pegula said in a news conference, after she had refocused to win 6-7(8), 7-5, 7-6(5) in three hours and 10 minutes.

“This is really quite the introduction.”

For Pegula, and the dozens of players who choose not to head straight to Europe come the end of the tennis’ calendar’s winter swing on hard courts in Australia, West Asia and North America, being in the U.S. for the start of clay season feels plenty familiar. The points and matches get slower, abductors start howling from daily sliding around courts and dirt starts showing up on socks and in shower drains.

Just one thing: There is no red clay here.

Its absence tells a larger story about American tennis, as the sport moves into its annual European tour of crushed, red brick.

The Charleston Open, a WTA 500 tournament and the longest-standing women’s-only event in North America, is played on green clay, a grainy surface prevalent throughout the southeast United States that many Americans, professional and amateur, are familiar with.

At the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships, an ATP 250 in Houston, the surface is a darker maroon red, and its composition also differs from what’s used in Europe. The variant draws a strong contingent of American players looking to acclimate their bodies and games to clay, while extending their time at home before heading across the Atlantic Ocean for weeks or months at a time.

World No. 9 Ben Shelton, Frances Tiafoe (18), Tommy Paul (21) and Learner Tien (22) all played in Houston. In Charleston, world No. 5 Pegula was joined by Iva Jović (16), Madison Keys (18) and Amanda Anisimova (6), who withdrew due to injury.

At both tournaments, players appreciate how the unique surface acts as a midway point between hard and clay courts, allowing for a smoother transition to the real stuff.

“It’s a great transition to the red clay because it is a little bit faster,” Bianca Andreescu said in a news conference in Charleston this week. “Coming from hard courts, you can still implement hard-court tennis in a way, and then try to get matches in to play around with how you want to play on the red clay.”

Pegula likes the timing of the tournament, too. It offers a slightly lower-stakes opportunity to find a baseline for her clay-court game at least two weeks before she’ll play the season’s first clay-court WTA 1000 tournament, which is the level below a Grand Slam.

“I can go home and do some stuff that’s like: ‘OK, what did you do while in Charleston and what needs to get better?’ Kind of work on those things,” Pegula said in a news conference Wednesday.

“It can give you a little bit of confidence, but then I think just sets up a baseline of, like, okay, here’s where you are. Now let’s see how we can improve this for the rest of the clay court swing where it’s a little bit of a different surface as well.”

While there are differences between the clay at the French Open, and at the WTA 1000 Madrid and Italian Opens that precede it, European red clay is various guises of crushed red brick, velvety and plush, that diffuses speed when a ball makes contact with the court.

The green clay in Charleston, manufactured by Har-Tru, is ground basalt stone mined from a rock quarry in the Charlottesville, Va., area; the clay in Houston is also Har-Tru, a blend of red stone and brick dust that plays a little slower than its green counterpart.

The green clay feels softer to walk on than a sidewalk, but isn’t nearly as fine as its chalky European counterpart — pick it up and rub it between two fingers, and individual granules can be felt. It doesn’t smear nor stain clothing like red clay does, but its grains do work their way inside of shoes and onto hair.

The grittier surface means less speed comes off the ball when it makes contact with the court. Players can slide, but they stop shorter than they do when sliding on red clay, which can lead to some awkward stumbling.

“The movement is a bit different. This clay is a little bit grainier … It’s a little bit more tactical,” Jović said at a news conference after her second-round win in Charleston Wednesday.

“If you can wrong-foot people, you can almost make them like fall on their face. I almost fell on my face once or twice today. So it’s a little bit more tactical where the red clay is much easier to slide and maneuver.”

Jović does daily movement drills to help acclimate her body to the green clay, which was a big adjustment for her even though it’s not as smooth as red clay. As a Californian, she didn’t step on a clay court of any color until she was 13 or 14.

This is a familiar tale for plenty of rising American tennis players, unless they grew up in or around Florida, where Har-Tru is prized for its fast drainage after a downpour on a summer afternoon. When tennis expanded from the country club to the public park in the 1960s and 1970s, local governments built thousands of tennis courts. Hard courts were cheapest.

The U.S. Open went from grass to hard — with a brief stint on Har-Tru in the mid 1970s — and other tournaments of all levels followed. As young players grow up, they mould their games to the surface they need to win on. In the U.S., that means powerful serves, powerful first shots after those serves, and a desire to end points quickly.

On clay, with its slower, higher bounce, it’s harder to finish points by slamming a well-aimed winner, so players who grow up on the crushed brick develop greater rally tolerance, faster racket speed (to generate pace) and greater ball control with that speed. The returns of serve, defense and point construction are prized as much as the serve, ability to attack and win with brute force.

The ensuing lack of familiarity with clay for U.S. players often requires a mindset adjustment, too, not just a physical one. Non-European players who did not grow up playing on red clay like their European counterparts talked this week about using Charleston to figure out how they want to approach clay-court season. Europeans who grew up on play don’t necessarily have to expend that mental energy.

“Automatically, when I get on this surface, it comes very easy for me,” Spaniard Paula Badosa said Wednesday after her second-round win over Maria Sakkari.

“I know a little bit the plan that I have to play here, because I practiced so many times on clay, especially in my country. They have a way of playing that I think it’s very helpful. …We have the mindset, a very good mindset for clay.”

The common theory as to why Americans tend to struggle on clay isn’t just that their games aren’t suited for clay, but their minds aren’t, either. Coco Gauff’s win at last year’s French Open was the first by an American player since Serena Williams in 2015; an American man hasn’t won the singles title at Roland Garros since Andre Agassi in 1999. Gauff, a Floridian, had the benefit of both growing up playing on green clay and spending a significant amount of time training Williams’ former coach Patrick Mouratoglou’s academy in France as a youngster.

Pegula had to remind herself to think Wednesday, when games against Putintseva felt plodding and she had trouble putting away the type of easy points she won in a snap just weeks ago. She produced a similar comeback Thursday, beating Elisabetta Cocciaretto of Italy from 4-1 down in the third set.

“Everyone is trying to get used to moving again and playing points a little bit differently and constructing points differently. I do think that points can be longer. The balls seem kind of heavy here when the clay gets wet, it’s tough to hold serve because it doesn’t really move,” Pegula said.

“Coming from Miami, even Indian Wells, you’re getting a lot of free points on your serves, and then all of a sudden you’re not. … It’s just like, sometimes you remember how to play on clay, and then sometimes you don’t. It’s kind of coming in and out in these matches.”

Pegula knows she has another adjustment ahead of her in the coming weeks. Charleston’s green clay is no substitute for Europe’s red. But mentally, at least, this week has been a nice reminder that she can gut out a win on dirt.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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