Clay court

The Clay Court (English clay court ) is one of the four playing surfaces in tennis. It consists mostly of clay, a recycled product from crushed bricks.

Use

Clay courts are widely used especially in Continental European and Latin American countries and are usually located outdoors. The most famous clay court tournament, the French Open in Paris, which will be held on this document since 1891. Therefore, the playing surface is a challenge, as opposed to hard and grass courts as it is much slower. Reason for this is that the balls come off relatively high and thus lose speed. This has the consequence that the games are taking longer on average than games on other surfaces.

Most tennis courts are made of red sandstone. At the Madrid Masters 2012 tournament director Ion Ţiriac introduced the blue sand. However, this was faster and more slippery than the red sand in the opinion of the players and therefore received much criticism. A year later it was again played on red sand.

Successful player

The Spaniard Rafael Nadal is more often than sand king (german king of clay ) because he holds several records on this document. He won eight times in nine years, for example, the French Open and was the Monte Carlo Masters even win eight times in a row. Overall, he won 42 tournaments so far on this surface. Only Guillermo Vilas won more tournaments on the decking with 48 titles.

Between 1973 and 1979, the US-American Chris Evert was 125 times victorious on sand in a row - a record unmatched to this day. She won between August 1973 and May 1979, all of their games on this surface.