In Tennis Elbow, we discussed the nature of the injury and surveyed how changes to equipment, strokes, and off-court activities can help prevent elbow damage. Here, we will look at one other important choice you can make: which court surface to play on.
Court surfaces relate to the stress tennis puts on your elbow through three key influences on the ball's bounce: predictability, speed, and height.
Predictability, or the trueness of the bounce, is the most important factor for your arm, because unpredictable bounces increase the likelihood that you'll hit the ball off the centerline of your racquet, which will cause the racquet to twist in your hand. This torsion puts a heavy strain on the tendons that are injured in tennis elbow. Unpredictable bounces also cause mis-timed hits, which can disrupt what would have been a biomechanically sound stroke and force a last-second adjustment that puts your arm into an awkward, vulnerable position where it has to do most of the work itself.
Ball speed matters to your elbow because, at a given point of impact on your stringbed, it determines the magnitude of the shock and torsion that stress your arm. You're also more likely to hit a faster ball late, which will put your arm in a more awkward position and keep you from using your legs and body weight to do much of the work. The speed of the ball is primarily determined by how fast your opponent hits it, but different court surfaces do slow the ball down more or less on the bounce, which is why courts are called "slow" and "fast."
The average height of the ball's bounce probably has the smallest effect on your risk of tennis elbow, but it's certainly a significant factor. The stroke most often associated with tennis elbow is an awkward one-handed backhand, and one-handed backhands, especially topspins, get much more awkward as the point of contact rises. If you study photo sequences of one-handed backhands, you'll see that tennis players tend much more often to hit the ball out in front, with their legs and body weight contributing properly to the stroke, when the point of contact is relatively low. Unlike the predictability and speed of the bounce, though, you can largely control your height of contact with the ball by adjusting your position forward or backward, either to intercept the ball on the rise or to let it fall after its peak.
Ideal for your elbow would be a predictable, slow, and relatively low bounce, but no court surface has all three of those qualities. A court can't produce both a slow and a low bounce, because what slows the ball down is the court surface grabbing it and diverting some of its forward motion upward.
Grass is probably the worst surface for your arm, because it's both fast and unpredictable, but at least its relatively low bounces reduce the number of high backhands you'll have to hit. Grass points are also the shortest, so you'll hit fewer balls per match.
Clay is sometimes thought to be easier on your elbow, because it's the slowest surface, but its unpredictable and higher bounces cause more elbow stress than the reduced speed relieves. Clay points are by far the longest, so your arm will endure many more racquet-ball collisions per match.
Hard courts vary in speed from quite fast to almost as slow as clay. An extremely fast hard court, if you're not used to it, might be quite tough on your arm, because you'll often hit the ball late, but otherwise, hard courts, because of their predictable bounces, should be easier on your arm than grass or clay. The best surface for your elbow should be a very slow hard court, where you'll get predictable, relatively slow, although also relatively high, bounces.
