Grass Court Tennis

It wasn't exactly Centre Center Court at Wimbledon, but yesterday afternoon I played tennis on the grass courts at the Brookfield complex where I'm staying. The grass was quite long and looked like it had not been cut in a rather long time, one of the courts had fallen tree branches occupying one of the doubles alleys. In spite of the less than ideal condition the court was in, I was pretty excited to be able to play on the surface that inspired serving and volleying.

The courts themselves were riddled with divots and only about half of the lines were straight. The ground was so uneven that about every other ball resulted in a bad bounce. Normal rallying beyond 3-4 balls was incredibly difficult because one person would usually hit an inadvertent winner. After about 5 minutes I completely abandoned any attempt at hitting a topspin backhand because it was nearly impossible with the erratic bounces. My hitting partner and I both ended up looking like idiots a bunch of times swinging and missing at balls that didn't bounce as we expected them to. In spite of all the inconveniences, it was still really cool to see chalk fly whenever we hit a line.

After having played a set on grass, I now understand why the English developed serving and volleying and are more prone to using the continental grip. If the ball doesn't bounce on your side of the net it is a massive advantage because there is no chance of a bad bounce. Similarly, a continental grip on the forehand makes it easier to adjust to bad bounces.

After we were finished playing, the balls we had used were grass and dirt stained. If I hadn't just finished using them I would've guessed that they had been used by a dog owner as something for Fido to fetch for the past few weeks.