On this weeks final installment of History of Tennis Courts, I will be discussing the final type of tennis court surface, which are carpet tennis courts. Tennis is one of those sports that can be played on many different types of surfaces, however, carpet is not the first thing that comes to mind, at least not in the U.S. that is. These types of courts are mainly seen in European countries and places with extremely cold temperatures due to their resiliency and low maintenance.
In the early nineties, carpet tennis courts were slowly phased out of play during major tennis tournaments due to their inconsistency and instability for players on the tour. They were instead changed to hard courts. Now a days there is not a single tournament that is played on carpet courts and they are slowly becoming extinct. Another reason that they are no longer a desired surface was due to the short rallies and points that would take place. Many of the fans at these tournaments would grow tired of only seeing a couples shots exchanged before the end of the point when they are sometimes paying a pretty hefty penny in order to watch them. This drove the ATP and ITF, which are the two head governing bodies across the world that deal with the tennis rules and procedures, to eliminate this as a surface for pro level tournaments. For the first few years, players and fans both showed their dislike for this rule change, but ultimately grew to live with it.
As far as what the actual “carpet” is made of, it is actually a mixture of sand and artificial turf, therefore carpet is not actually used on the court itself. Over the years, it became easier to refer to these types of courts as carpet since this would be the classification that would be used for any type of court that was not either grass, hard, or clay. It is fairly easy to take care of a carpet court as well. A lot of if has to deal with making sure that there is no debris on the court that a player could step on driving it into the surface. Along with sweeping the courts to make sure the sand is distributed evenly everywhere. A lot of the times, leaf blowers are used to spread the substance. It is an effectively cheap method to spread and it is also very efficient as well.
When playing on a carpet court, players will see a tremendous difference in the level of play when comparing to other courts. For instance, the ball will feel like it is going much faster without adding any additional power to it because of the way the ball bounces on the surface. It will not bounce very high therefore it will not give the player much reaction time to return it causing the level of play to be very quick. This is also one of the reasons that the courts were banned from the tournaments. These types of courts made the ball to fast for play and caused the points to finish early.
Carpet courts still exist today, however, it will be extremely hard to find them in the U.S. because the surface just isn’t popular anymore. It also very hard to find them in other countries as well. Some clubs across the world that deal with extremely cold temperatures still use these types of courts due to the low maintenance and how well they stand up to cold temperatures. For example, Switzerland still uses carpet courts because of their extreme temperatures as well as the cost of replacing them is very cheap. When a carpet court is damaged, the easiest thing to do is just replace it. The court itself is simply scraped up and a new one is rolled out and glued to the ground with a special type of adhesive.
Unfortunately, I have not had the pleasure of experiencing what a carpet court feels like since they are so unpopular and rare, however I can make my own assumption as to what they would feel like. The closest thing that would compare to it would be a hard court and a grass court combined. The hardcourt being compared to the speed of the ball and a grass court compared to the bounce of the ball. By thinking about this I can imagine that I would not be in love with this type of surface. This is just a speculation though, and I hope to get the chance to see if my hypothesis is true.
Thanks again for reading my blog throughout the course of this series and I hope you gained some pretty insightful knowledge about tennis courts. For you tennis players out there, I hope that you can get the chance to experience these types of surfaces as well and look back to my blog for some helpful tips. And for those of you who are considering playing tennis, I hope this blog encourages you to get out there and try something new!