We see a lot of our LTA funded men being asked to go and play clay court matches to improve their game, but I don't seem to see that being promoted within the women's game. In fact i'm struggling to think of anyone other that Hev, Joko, Amanda and Eleanor who has played clay on the senior tour this year.
The GB clay court 10Ks were not scheduled this year.
Any reason why clay court does not seem to be the way forward to develop our GB women's games?
Given the homogenisation of surfaces it may well be that Bates and his team don't see the perceived benefits of working on clay to improve specific aspects of your game as really being worth all that much - or being incapable of replication under ordinary training and competition programmes.
To be honest I'm not convinced you learn or develop a huge amount by losing in 128 player qualy draws on Green Clay in the States, for example.
-- Edited by PaulM on Wednesday 20th of August 2014 02:26:16 PM
1. the rallies are generally longer and should thus improve fitness
2. less reliance on service point winners and thus a benefit of hitting more accurate ground shots
I have noticed quite a few of the tennis centres - Nottingham, NTC etc building clay courts recently.
There isn't really a high level clay court circuit for women in the same way as there is for men. The majority of top women play 90% of their tennis on hardcourts. Generally rallies in women's tennis are shorter than in the men's game - for whatever reason most women hit a flatter shot which does shorten points. So maybe not promoted because the benefits less relevant to the women's game.
The ITF Clay court tournaments in Edinburgh Bournemouth and Newcastle were scrubbed two/three years ago. I guess it's not much fun playing in a howling gale at Craiglockhart in early May it was freezing spectating
