| The Indoor Advantage | |
Dateline: 11/17/98
As the 1998 tennis season comes to a close, both the WTA and ATP tours feature a fairly tight final stretch in the race for the prized year-end, number-one singles ranking. The pro tennis year is a marathon, testing each player's endurance in a series of outdoor environments: Australian hard courts, European and American clay, English grass, then American hard courts. At the finish line are the year-end rankings, but the sprint for the top rankings takes place indoors, and in this artificial world, the track slants uphill for some types of players, downhill for others.
Indoor courts are fast. How fast depends basically on the roughness of the court surface, but any surface will play faster indoors than it will outdoors because the lack of wind indoors makes it easier to connect cleanly with the ball and thus hit it harder. Indoor courts also tend to be relatively smooth. A rough surface bites into the ball, slowing it down and pushing it upward so that it bounces higher. On a smooth surface, the ball skids forward with very little deceleration. As you watch the upcoming season finales, notice how predictably these court characteristics favor certain players.
At the top of the WTA Tour, the indoor season results have sustained Lindsay Davenport's position at number one, and she needs only to win her first round at the Chase Championships today to lock up the year-end title. Davenport's game is well-suited to indoor play. Her biggest asset is power, and on a fast court, her opponent has less time to run down powerful shots. The low bounce of Davenport's relatively flat strokes is tough enough outdoors - indoors it's brutal. By the same token, though, some players can use low balls against Davenport, whose height can make them tough to handle. Steffi Graf, with a backhand slice that skids extremely low on fast courts, just upset Davenport at the Advanta Championships. Graf's slice often sets up the next ball for her huge forehand, which is also magnified on a fast court.
Pete Sampras has the perfect game for the indoor courts, with a big serve, powerful groundstrokes, an effective slice backhand, and aggressive net play. The year-end number one ranking will be decided in the ATP Tour World Championships at the end of this month. Only Marcelo Rios and Patrick Rafter have enough points to overtake Sampras, but Rafter is out with knee problems, and Rios is most comfortable on clay, the exact opposite of an indoor court. If Sampras were healthy, the outcome would be fairly certain, but his recent back problems give Rios a shot.
The problem for Rios will be finding time to hit his strokes. On clay, he can get to almost anything in time to set up his precise groundstrokes. Indoors, his opponents will be able to blast more winners by him, especially serves. His ability to reciprocate will be limited, with one of the slower serves on the tour and only moderately powerful groundstrokes. Rios's groundstrokes depend less upon topspin than those of many of his South American peers, but more than many of his upcoming indoor opponents. Indoors, it's harder to hit topspin, because brushing upward on a ball becomes more difficult when it bounces low. This is one reason why the heavy topspin players, especially those with the more western grips, usually don't fare well indoors.
Check the ESPN TV Listings for broadcast times for The Chase Championships, November 16-22, and The ATP World Championships, November 24-27.
