Introduction from Terry Rocavert
I first set eyes on a European Clay Court in 1975, my first year playing on the International circuit.
Having grown up playing on sandy stabilized loam courts in Sydney and occasionally on the “ant bed” courts in the country, it struck me immediately, that the European clay courts were far superior. Several other aspects also became painfully obvious to me;After all the years playing at home, I had not learned how to keep the ball in play, I had very little
idea about court craft, my movement was poor and worst of all, the good European players even at the lower levels of professional tennis had no trouble beating me. The older Aussies told me not to worry; it takes at least 3 years to learn to play on this “stuff”.
They were right, after 3 years of playing on almost nothing else; I had done a great deal of “catching up” and I believe those (red clay court) apprenticeship years were the reason I was able to have any success in climbing the rankings and became able to compete in Grand Slam events. Unfortunately very few players from Australia in the past 3 decades have been able to “catch up” the same way. I think that has been well and truly proven.
In my opinion players from Europe and South America display greater imagination and a wider range of skills than players from any other part of the world. In addition, they are able to adapt those skills, developed on red clay, to any other surface. Whilst no one can say that red clay is the panacea for all Australian tennis; in my view it is something positive that we can change and its introduction to the Australian tennis landscape can only be beneficial.
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