Alexander Zverev recently opened up about changes that tournaments made to suit Roger Federer during his dominance.
Zverev is only 27 years old, but many forget that he's been competing on the ATP Tour for over a decade now. Thanks to his brother Mischa, who was a very solid player in his time, Zverev was able to experience life on the ATP Tour from a very young age.
As a kid, he practiced with some notable professionals quite often. Then, his own breakthrough came early in his career, as he had some notable results even back in 2014 when he was only 17 years old.
The proper breakthrough came two years later, but the crucial point is that of the new generation of players, he's seen it all in tennis so far. One of the main talking points these days has been the speed of the courts in Cincinnati.
It's a really fast, hard court, and it's generally been that way for the past few years. Some like it, others don't, but for Zverev, it doesn't matter as much. He's done well on it lately, and he attributed it to simply being familiar with courts of this speed.
As he said while speaking with Prakash Amritraj of the Tennis Channel, he was around ten years ago when the sport had some really fast courts. He even admitted that a huge part of that was because Federer liked fast courts and did well on them, so events sped things up so that he could do well, as he was a huge crowd magnet.
"I'm still from the generation of ten years ago, when we had some very fast hard courts, especially when Roger was still around. Obviously, tournaments liked him to go deep, so they made some very fast hard courts."
Obviously, it's important to mention that it's more of a theory and not something that was ever explicitly confirmed. Still, it's an interesting admission from the German player, but it has some merit.
Court speeds have been adjusted over the years for various reasons. More recently, courts have been slowed down to make matches more exciting and kind of longer. Daniil Medvedev notably protested that, but in the United States, courts have been getting quicker lately.
Most American players love faster courts, so having faster courts makes it more likely for them to succeed. The tournament director of the Cincinnati Open even admitted that the courts in Cincinnati are very fast this year, and players have felt it.
For Zverev, it's not been a huge issue, which he also speculated might have something to do with his racket. It's an old, quite heavy model, so he thinks it possibly helps control a pacy ball.
The new models are quite light and allow players to put a lot of pace into the ball, but control could be worse.
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