The grass is greener on this side

It does not seem surprising at all that the grass courts at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club have, excuse the pun, roots with biblical connections.

After all Wimbledon is one of those British institutions that needs no more identification than the definite article “The”: The Championships of tennis, The Open of golf, The Bard of Avon, The Behind of Pippa Middleton.

Till then, Wimbledon used a mix of 70% ryegrass and 30% creeping red fescue. It was this blend of grasses that historically gave the courts their signature low, skidding bounce and helped make Wimbledon the last bastion of the fast, serve-and-volley game.

But by 2001, Seaward and company were beginning to worry about how the courts were coping with the hard, powerful modern game.

It is often said that three things come together to make the tennis at Wimbledon special: the two players on either side of the net, and the grass beneath their feet. It is easy to forget this, especially for the millions of viewers who enjoy their tennis on television, but the grasses that cover the courts are organic, living things in themselves. Like all living things, not only are there a tremendous variety of grasses, but each grass has its own distinct personality.

For instance, the creeping red fescue variety originally used at Wimbledon grows best in cool, shaded places with limited watering. While it is used widely for sporting surfaces, the grass has one drawback: It isn’t enormously strong. Or to use a trade phrase: Creeping red fescue has a “low to moderate tolerance for traffic”.

The modern men’s game is all about frenzied traffic. In the famous marathon match between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut that took place at The Championships in 2010, South African sports psychologist Ross Tucker estimated that both players covered a distance of around 15.5 miles (around 24.9km) each. Out of which around 6.2 miles was covered at full running speed.

Stri, a world authority on sporting surfaces, carried out a series of tests on a variety of grasses before suggesting that Wimbledon replace the blended mix with a 100% perennial ryegrass surface. The new surfaces were unveiled in 2001.

And the tennis world has never really stopped grumbling about it since. In 2008, Tim Henman, the once great British hope of a Grand Slam win, told Time magazine that new grass may have even changed his playing style completely: “I remember sitting at a changeover in 2002 in utter frustration and thinking ‘What on earth is going on here? I’m on a grass court and it’s the slowest court I’ve played on this year’.”

Henman’s protest is not without substance. In 2001, the final was a blazing-fast serve-and-volley match between Goran Ivanisevic and Patrick Rafter. In the 2002 final between Lleyton Hewitt and David Nalbandian, there wasn’t a single serve-and-volley point scored all match.

Surely the grass was beginning to have an impact. But how?

Ryegrass is a hardy variety with tufts that stay vertical. This means that balls landing on the grass skid less and tend to bounce higher. Thus essentially slowing down the game. However, the Wimbledon website makes it clear that the bounce, unlike widely assumed, is much more a function of the soil beneath than the grass on top. The harder and drier the soil, the better, more consistent the bounce.

Besides hardiness and durability, turf grasses are also chosen for their “visual merit”, especially under wear. In other words, the grass must look lush and lively even after it has been subjected to a brutal battering by someone like Rafael Nadal.

The perennial ryegrass used at Wimbledon was developed at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Wales. The grass is a blend of two types of ryegrass: Aberelf and Aberimp. Both grasses score highly when it comes to not just durability but also appearance. In fact, Wimbledon is so obsessed with how the courts look that there is even a method to how the courts are mowed.

The Guardian’s Blake Morrison reported in 2008 that even with the latest mowing machines, each mower has an individual style of creating the court’s alternating overlapping lines. In order to maintain consistency through the tournament, each court is mowed by the same mower every day.

The most widespread criticism of Wimbledon’s new ryegrass courts is that it makes international tennis even more homogenous. For years Wimbledon had the only surface that was forgiving of the serve-and-volley technique. Every other Grand Slam and most other tournaments were being determined by brutal baseline power tennis. Wimbledon still poses a challenge unique to grass, but the distinction of that challenge has reduced somewhat.

However, in 2012 at least, the perennial ryegrass will justify itself. With the Olympic tournament starting immediately after The Championships, the durability of the surface will help ground staff rejuvenate it in record time between events.

Ryegrass’ moment of biblical fame appears in the Gospel of St Matthew. In the famous Parable of The Tares, Jesus Christ tells his followers that the kingdom of heaven is like a man who has sown his field with good wheat. But in the night, his enemy comes and sows it with darnel, a kind of ryegrass that attacks wheat like a weed, intermingling the roots of both plants.

Perplexed servants run to the man and tell him about the darnel. Should they uproot the ryegrass right away? The master ponders and then tells them to let things be. They will separate the weeds from the wheat at the time of harvest.

Ryegrass might still be the villain in the eyes of many Wimbledon aficionados. But it still plays a key role in choosing the good from the bad in international tennis. Thank god for that.Write to lounge@livemint.com