Paris 2024 Olympic Games: Back to the ‘terre battue’ at Roland Garros

The competition surface doesn’t change for most Olympic sports. A pool is a pool. A court is a court. A wrestling mat is a mat. And so on. Tennis? That’s a whole different story, with tournaments on clay, hard or grass courts — and now there’s a shift for the Paris Games.

For the first time in more than 30 years, the tennis competition at the Olympics will be held on red clay. That means players who recently switched from clay (at Roland Garros in early June) to grass (in early July) at Wimbledon will soon have to change course again.

The “terre battue” at Roland Garros, used for the French Open, will host Olympic competitions from July 27 – two weeks after Wimbledon concluded with singles titles for Czech Republic’s Barbora Krejcikova and Spain’s Carlos Alcaraz – and the return to that venue is more worrying for some athletes than others.

“It’s going to be interesting. But everybody’s doing it a little bit. We’re all in the same boat,” said Jessica Pegula, a top-10 American who is expected to play singles, women’s doubles with U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff and possibly mixed doubles. “I usually don’t have a problem with transitions. And I like the way the courts play there. It’s maybe easier than other places where we play on clay. When it’s warm in Paris, it plays pretty well. There’s good speed. There’s not much to get used to.” For her, maybe.

“It will be the first time for me to go from grass to clay,” said Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion and a semifinalist there this month. “It’s not easy. Physically, (or) mentally, it’s not easy.” An additional factor on some players’ minds: There will be a brief turnaround after the Olympics to prepare for the switch to hard courts ahead of the US Open, which begins in late August. That’s less than a month after the medals are handed out in France.

“It’s terrible for the schedule,” said Taylor Fritz, Pegula’s U.S. teammate and a recent quarterfinalist at the All England Club. “It doesn’t make any sense. It ruins everything, that’s for sure.” Tennis becomes a different sport, in some important ways, depending on where it’s played.

“You have to adapt to it. … It will obviously be strange to go back to clay quickly,” said Cam Norrie, who will represent Great Britain at the Olympics, “but we are constantly changing surfaces and variables.” Clay is softer and slower, which can reduce the power of serves and ground shots and create longer exchanges, putting a premium on stamina, while the grittiness can magnify the effect of heavy topspin. Grass is faster and balls bounce lower. Hard courts generally produce cleaner, midrange bounces and will generally reward those who go for point-ending shots.

Perhaps the biggest difference between them is footwork. Clay requires sliding. Grass is more about bumpy steps, to prevent slipping. Hard courts generally do not cause as many falls as the other courts.

“For a clay-court player, it’s not that hard to adjust,” said Michael Chang, the 1989 French Open winner. “For (people) who grew up playing on the surface, you just know the surface so well.” So someone like Iga Swiatek, who has won four of the last five French Opens, should feel comfortable and confident on clay, by far her best surface.

The same goes, of course, for Rafael Nadal, a 14-time champion at Roland Garros. Novak Djokovic has won at least three Grand Slam titles at each of the sport’s biggest events, the only one to do so, and the adjustments required to do so come quite naturally to him.

But Alcaraz, whose title at Roland Garros this year made him at 21 the youngest man to win a major trophy on clay, hard and grass courts, had this to say about the move from London to Paris: “It’s not easy to change surfaces in just one week.” (AP) DDV