Roger Federer has urged tournament chiefs to change up the court speeds in order to provide more variety for players. The Swiss icon has been overseeing the latest edition of the Laver Cup, the yearly international tournament he co-founded in 2017. Team World claimed the honours for the third time on Sunday, beating Team Europe to get their hands on the trophy.
During the tournament, Federer appeared on Served with Andy Roddick to discuss modern court surfaces. He pointed out that many players seem to find it easier returning serves than in previous years. Federer also suggested that surfaces should be altered to give players more freedom to emphasise their strengths on their preferred court type.
“I feel like they return so easily nowadays,” said Federer. “I don’t know if the conditions are a bit slower or if they are just better at it. Making returns was hard. Now, they just stand there. That’s why I sliced, just to float it in there and figure it out.
Asked if there was a need to tweak court surfaces to bring in different elements of the game, Federer replied: “Yes, definitely. I just had this conversation this morning with Reilly Opelka.
“I told him it’s not okay, and I fault myself because I’m part of the decision-making process here [at the Laver Cup]. It can’t be that he’s serving on the outside, indoors against Casper Ruud who actually can go back.
“He even has that option indoors to return that serve which is arguably one of the best serves in the game right now. He returns it at hip height with a cross-court passing shot. It should be a little bit more difficult to be able to do that.
“I think that’s why we as tournament directors need to fix it. We need to have not only fast courts, but what we want to see is [Carlos] Alcaraz or [Jannik] Sinner figure it out on lightning fast and then have the same match on super slow and see how that matches up.
“That’s how the ranking points used to be, do you remember? Back in the day, only 12 tournaments counted so everybody would play on their favourite surface.
“They would sometimes meet and those were the best matches, when you had the attacker against the retriever, and now everybody plays similar. It’s because tournament directors have allowed it with the ball speed and court speed.
“Every week is basically the same. That’s why you can just go from winning the French Open and Wimbledon and the US Open just playing the same way.”
Federer added that he suspects tournament chiefs like to keep courts slower to make it harder for weaker players to beat the likes of Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
“I understand the safety net tournament directors see in making the surface slower. For the weaker player, he has to hit extra amazing shots to beat Sinner whereas if it’s quick, he can only maybe blast a few at the right time and he gets past,” he said.
“That’s why tournament directors [like] having Sinner and Alcaraz in the finals, it kind of works for the game.”
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Content Source: www.express.co.uk