With just a few strokes, those fresh and clean colors burst out with rich brilliance, wandering quietly and peacefully in the emerald blue of the Mediterranean.
It's like a paradise.
Steep and rugged cliffs stand near the sea, lush olive trees and pine trees meander along the coastal road, and ivory-white stone villages are hidden in the clean blue and green, revealing a corner half-hidden by a pipa.
, the curling smoke adds a bit of popularity to the quiet scene in front of you.
Chug tug tug.
A red motorcycle drove along the road, passing through the green and blue scenery. You didn't need to reach out to feel the breeze.
Follow the trajectory of the motorcycle and look forward, and then you can see pages and pages of white sailing boats wandering in the emerald green ocean. Yachts are docked neatly at the port, like white and flawless shells.
You can also see people lying on the deck sunbathing.
Lazy and cozy.
The whole world is intoxicating. If you close your eyes, you can feel the brightness and refreshing of the sun, mixed with the fishy smell of the sea and the moisture of the woods.
From one resort to another, surrounded by the ocean, you can still deeply feel the specialness of the island in front of you.
A kind of tranquility, a kind of leisure, a kind of simplicity and purity isolated from the world.
Obviously, this is not Miami.
After the Miami Masters, this marks the end of the spring hard court season, and professional tennis has officially entered clay court time.
Under the influence of the comprehensive commercialization process of professional tennis, there are more and more hard-court events around the world, and correspondingly, there are fewer and fewer clay-court and grass-court events.
The number of events is one thing. Even the schedule and calendar can tell the clues——
Throughout the year, only April and May are clay court seasons, and the grass court season is even more pitiful, with only a short period of June, and the rest of the time is all on hard courts.
Of course, clay soil is a traditional tennis venue, and low-level events are still scattered at different times throughout the year. Even in the hard court season, clay soil can be seen in the challenge tournament, the Hope Tournament or the 250 points tournament, but this
After all, they are a minority. Judging from the official arrangements of ATP and WTA:
For red soil, it is only two months; for grass, it is reduced to one month.
It is precisely because of this that there are more and more players who are good at hard courts, and they firmly occupy the top 50 seats in the world rankings, changing the trend of this sport.
but!
No one can deny that the unique style of clay court and grass court events has always been an indispensable part of tennis, and it is also necessary to enrich the sport, not just the venue, the playing style, the content of the game, the confrontation situation, etc.
, and all are different.
It can be seen from a small detail that the ATP and WTA still encourage the diversity of venues, which is also an important part of retaining the unique style of tennis:
Tournament level servings.
Take the ATP as an example. Throughout the year, there are four Grand Slams and nine Masters events. This is the highest level of top events.
Four Grand Slams, two on hard courts, one on clay and one on grass.
There are nine Masters events, six hard courts and three clay courts. Unfortunately, there is no grass court - however, the ATP has been discussing the issue of adding a grass court Masters event and actively promoted it. Despite the difficulties, the ATP has never given up.
Looking for a suitable city, venue and sponsor.
The three clay court Masters tournaments are Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome.
In fact, the Rome Masters has been suffering from financial problems in recent years. Due to Italy's economic difficulties, the event has never received official support, and even the sponsors are not strong enough. As a result, the total prize money of the Rome tournament has always been the lowest among all Masters.
Being at the bottom and facing many difficulties.
Despite this, ATP has always provided sponsorship through different channels and in different ways, hoping to ensure the status of the Clay Court Masters and the diversity of tennis venues; at the same time, in just two months of the clay court season, there were three Masters and one
A Grand Slam event once again proved the importance of clay soil.
This year will not only be the first time that Gao Wen competes in clay and grass events, officially stepping into another area of the tennis world; it will also be the first time that Gao Wen plays in an official clay court event in his career.
As mentioned before, the biggest reason for the proliferation of hard court events is that the creation, maintenance and upkeep of venues are simpler and cheaper. Even though hard court events are more damaging to players' bodies and are more likely to cause injuries, hard court events are more likely to cause injuries.
The number of earth balls is still increasing across the board.
This is the case in North America. Hard courts can be found everywhere, even in community sports centers; while clay and grass courts, which are more expensive to maintain, are very rare.
To be precise, grass courts do exist in North America, but they are basically private clubs and not open to the public; in addition, there are a few clay courts in North America——
It should be said that green clay courts are also clay courts, but they are green clay instead of red clay.
In the 1920s, Henry Alexander Robinson was a tennis court contractor in New York and the only agent for European clay courts in the United States.
As his experience grew, he began to look for better and more economical alternatives to raw materials in the United States. At that time, he found a lot of green gravel waste left after construction at a construction company in Pennsylvania. Robinson crushed the waste into fine powder for experiments.
, built the first green clay course in Maryland in 1931.
In the beginning, the green clay court was given the name of "pure". Firstly, the color was pure and no dye was added at all; secondly, the performance was stable and balanced, the tennis ball bounced more regularly, and the players ran and moved more smoothly and freely -
—Compared to grass.
From 1975 to 1977, the US Open once used green clay courts. Among the four Grand Slams, the US Open was the only tournament that used three types of courts: grass, clay, and hard courts.
If the US Open still insists on green soil today, then the four Grand Slams will represent four types of events.
Unfortunately, with the rise of tennis in the 1970s, countless tennis courts sprouted up across the North American continent, and green clay courts enjoyed a brief moment of glory. However, due to high maintenance costs, they were completely replaced by the rise of hard courts in the 1980s, and they fell into decline in the blink of an eye.
Come down.
Nowadays, the number of green clay tennis courts in the North American continent is pretty good, but almost all professional events in North America have abandoned the clay and switched to hard courts.
Currently, the only exception is Charleston.
This event, held immediately after the Miami Masters, is still one of the WTA's high-level events, and it still insists on using green clay venues.
In the ATP Tour, Houston has switched from green clay to clay in recent years, so there are no longer green clay events in men's events.
It is precisely because of this that when Gao Wen competed in high school and college competitions in North America, he basically played on hard courts. He occasionally trained on green clay or clay, but he never stood on the official court, not even in NCAA games.
Everything is brand new to Gawain.
So, after the Miami tournament, before facing the Monte Carlo Masters, Gao Wen cleared his schedule and prepared to go to the clay to train hard——
The destination is the small island in front of us, Mallorca.