The modern day myth of clay
With Roland-Garros in full swing, we're challenging the idea of whether proficiency on clay is now a prerequisite for top players.
Since 2022, Top 10 player Hubert Hurkacz has a 67.6% win-ratio on clay, compared to 66.9% on other surfaces. Fellow consistently high-ranking players with attacking styles – Taylor Fritz and Grigor Dimitrov – have similar surface differentials across the same period, despite little association with clay prowess.
On the Men’s side, there was a time when a big serving, attacking player could reach the pinnacle of ATP and sustain a top ten ranking with very little appetite for, or relative success on, clay courts. Andy Roddick – with a Best French Open result of the Fourth Round - fits this profile.
Underlining the point, Hurkacz recently beat Rafa Nadal, Tomas Etcheverry and Sebastian Baez back-to-back in the recent Rome Masters.
While any individual result was not wholly unexpected, all are high-level clay courters to the point of specialists.
Though the WTA is less well known for player court specialisation, there are still comparisons to be made with the current ATP crop. Caroline Garcia is a mainstay at the top of the WTA Serve Stats leaderboard, yet since 2022, her win-ratios on both clay and other surfaces (combined) are an identical 62.5%.
The trend toward holistic clay court commitment was in many ways set by the preceding generation. Sharapova was twice crowned Roland Garros champion relatively late in her career, having vastly improved her movement on clay.
Coinciding with this, we have an era of slower hard and grass courts. With certain hard courts possessing speed ratings as low as their clay counterparts, it’s not surprising the reduced variation in court profiles is replicated in player performance across surfaces. Unlike grass courts, the clay court season stretches far and wide, with multiple high-profile tournaments on both the ATP and WTA. While these facts remain the case, the answer to the question is evidently yes.
The 2023 Madrid 1000 on clay finished with a higher 1st serve points won % than Eastbourne’s grass court equivalent, a stat that would have been unheard of even five years back. Sample size comes into this, but also something often overlooked, altitude. The sea level English tournament sees gravity take a bigger grip than at the altitudes of central Spain, and it needs to be factored into the model.
At 10star, we look beyond the surface and process proprietary data on a multiple of other factors to find the true picture of which players might have the edge in any particular match.
