What Tennis Could Learn From the World Cup

Submissions have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.

As it is written, Wednesday is mailbag day.

• The World Cup notwithstanding, last week is often one of the slowest sports weeks of the year. And tennis is doing its part. With Wimbledon in the rearview mirror and only a few 250s on the docket, last week was the ideal time to get married, come to New York, etc.

• I spent some time with Novak Djokovic in New York City last week and will have outtakes soon.

• Ben Rothenberg first reported that the WTA will require genetic sex testing for all players. Here’s my question: Why the push?

• Here’s this week’s Served podcast:

Onward …

Jon, I have watched England beat France in the World Cup third place game. I wonder: Why doesn’t tennis do something similar at the Grand Slams? Could tennis do something similar at the Grand Slams? Should tennis do something similar at the Grand Slams?

Jerry J., CT

• My gut reaction: I don’t mind that idea in theory, especially if it moves more coins onto the players’ side of the ledger. It would mean more tennis for fans at the biggest events and more tennis being broadcast. It would elevate the majors even more (We are so exalted; losing semifinalists will stay to battle it out for a bronze medal).

But there are obvious problems. How many losing semifinalists would even play? After 12 (or more) days at an event, players are physically beat up. They are emotionally beat up after a Final Four defeat. They want to leave. Imagine this scenario at this year’s Wimbledon. Is Djokovic sticking around the All England Club—precluded from winning a 25th major—to compete for third place against Arthur Fery? (On the other hand, would Fery have stuck around for a chance at an additional, say, $500,000? Likely.) Would Coco Gauff really want to stick around to play Marta Kostyuk?

Also, I worry about a more intense version of the feeling that plagued Saturday’s World Cup event: No longer in competition for the ultimate prize, the athletes’ performance suited a low-stakes exhibition. You went in knowing neither team really wanted to be there, and that it was more an exercise in pride. France and England made the best of a suboptimal situation. The World Cup, a quadrennial event, can get away with this. A tennis major—held four times annually—might have a hard time with low-stakes, half-hearted emotional investment matches.

Can we dispense with calling Coco Gauff’s missed ball from mid-court, at match point, a drop shot? Drop shots are hit with more or less underspin, but definitely with an open racket face and ideally hit up so they drop more vertically and not forwards (see also: underspin). What Gauff did is more properly called (by many, but not in the text books) a dump; she hit down on the ball, or we could say she was looking to just pop it over, and had it successfully gone over she’d have won the point. But between her hesitant footwork (less than gainly) and the rather iron elbow shove of the ball, it was born of nerves (we all get them), [it] wasn’t no drop shot.

Yours in pedantry,
Skip Schwarzman

• If you gave Gauff truth serum, I suspect she would admit that she choked on that one. It’s O.K. and happens to every player. I still maintain it wasn’t the worst idea. It was just badly executed. All tournament long, players had been winning points—critical ones; match points in the case of Linda Nosková—on droppers. Gauff’s opponent was deep in the court. Minutes earlier she had grimaced holding her side, suggesting her movement might be compromised. Taking a middle-of-the-court forehand and tapping it is a choice, but not an indefensible one.

Coco Gauff fell to Karolína Muchová in the semifinals at Wimbledon. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Have they ever considered trying artificial grass, like Astroturf, at Wimbledon or any other grass tournament? It would be interesting to see what it would be like to play on a surface that doesn’t get destroyed within a week of play.

Raymond

• That would be a little like Peter Luger serving vegan meat, or your favorite songwriter or comedian using AI material. But your point is well-taken. The early rounds see slips and slides on fresh grass. In the latter rounds, the grass resembles a barren savannah after the wildlife grazes for a month. Why not replace it with an artificial surface that would prove more durable and, by extension, fair? The grass is so essential to the Wimbledon mystique—bad bounces and all—that it would fundamentally change the experience. And it would put the greenskeepers and groundskeepers out of work.

More pragmatically, at Wimbledon, Queen’s Club and year-round clubs, the grass experience is part of the appeal. The members don’t want artificial turf. They don’t want their courts temporarily resurfaced for the summer tournament either. For something like the Halle Open, maybe it’s a different conversation.

Hi Jon,

Wimbledon in the 90s was considered boring because most points were either aces, service winners or first volley winners. There was a backlash to this style of tennis and Wimbledon decided to slow down the courts. It could be argued that there was a golden age of tennis after this (although this might have been more because of the emergence of the Big Three). The final between [Jannik] Sinner and [Alexander] Zverev was basically ace, service winner or serve and one winner. So are we back to where we started. Is this style of tennis any more interesting than the good (or bad) old days? If I had to choose between serve and volley or serve and one, I personally would go for S&V.

Any comments?

Ananth

• I don’t know, the Wimbledon final was a four-set match with 32 aces (17–15 for Zverev), with plenty of long points from the baseline, various drop shots (even on the penultimate point) and solid all-court tennis. Sinner won 43 out of 145 return points. We’re a long way from Richard Krajicek, Goran Ivanišević, Michael Stich, Greg Rusedski and the like.

Andy Roddick and I discussed the following at a corporate event: Did the fast grass ace-a-thon of the 90s not benefit women’s tennis? Wait, what? Stick with the thesis here. While fans may have been bored watching the men engage in ace-fests and three-ball rallies, did it not help divert attention and appreciation to Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles and the Williams sisters? Discuss.

Hi, Jon,

50 parting thoughts and you couldn’t spare one for Félix Auger-Aliassime? I know my Canadian bias is showing, but a year ago, everyone (including him) was doubting he would ever live up to early promise. One year on, his rank is up over 20 places. He’s playing much better at the majors, and what a barn-burner against Djokovic! Dare we begin to believe again?

Cheers,
Susannah Murphy, Edmonton, AB

• Sure, a year ago, Félix Auger-Aliassime was No. 28. As I write this, he is No. 4. That he recently parted ways with his longtime coach Frédéric Fontang makes for the kind of high-risk, high-reward move that suggests he is thinking as you are: No. 4 is not enough. One downside of his run: He has so much to defend post-Cincinnati. We will see what his year-end ranking is, and how he fares this fall.

There is so much to like fundamentally about Auger-Aliassime. He’s a good athlete, has a good shot tolerance and can move. He is not the last of the tennis rip-your-heart-out streetfighters. But you could spin this as a positive: He knows who he is and who he is not. I would need to see a little more—i.e., an appearance in a major final; an all-out-war win; a takedown of Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz—before really deeming him an A-list major contender. But could it happen? Absolutely.

Hi Jon. Hope all’s well. I’ve been following your Wimbledon coverage and it was as good as ever.

One question I’d like you to consider for your mailbag. Why are clay-court tournaments still held after Wimbledon? What good can it do for players when the official hardcourt season starts in the US and Canada, as tuneups for the U.S. Open.

Thanks and regards
Kayezad E Adajania
Mumbai, India

• Thanks. It makes little sense for a variety of reasons, but there are soft weeks on the calendar and promoters willing to promote and players willing to play. There is a tour that is partially owned by players (more opportunities to earn points and rankings) and partially owned by tournaments (more opportunities to stage events), so there are few institutional impediments. Add that these clay events exist in Europe, the sport’s nerve center, where most players need not travel great distances to enter.

Does this bevy of post-grass, pre-cement, wait-we’re-back-on-clay? events confuse the common fan? Yes. Does it make tennis look unwieldy and disorganized? Yes.

On the other hand, capitalism is gonna capitalism. There is supply. There is demand. (There is little equivalent of government intervention.) And if there weren’t a market, these events wouldn’t exist.

HAVE A GOOD WEEK, EVERYONE!

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