So…what is clay like?

From the way, your foot slides on clay, to the way the ball interacts with the softer and granulated surface makes it a very different playing surface.

The sliding can help you recover faster if you time your slides well and »slide into« your shots. The strokes can also be modelled to work better for the clay courts. For example, a very explosive strokes, when player explodes and throws himself into the ball (think Shapovalov) will not get you far on clay as your recovery time is longer and you expand too much energy for a shot that doesn’t do enough damage on the other side of the net.

And then there is the bounce. The soft and granulated surface takes away some of the energy from the ball during collision and reduces the velocity in the horizontal direction. But make no mistake, a heavy ball loaded with top spin will still carry lots of energy and have great impact on the other side of the net, as topspin converts in to a higher bounce and greater angles on wide shots

So…what is good on clay?

Let’s take a look at some players that have done exceptionally well on clay in recent years. The ones that really stand out to me are Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka. We could also add Zverev (Clay masters win) and Soderling (famous win over Nadal) to the list. These players all have:

1. Long and not very compact strokes,
2. Very solid groundstrokes on both wings,
3. A lot of spin on their shots on both wings,
4. Consistently deep and heavy ball.

By no means, this indicates that grinding from the back of the court is what they aim to do, or as the traditional clay-court mantra focuses on repetition, shot tolerance and suffering from the back of the court.

What they really want to do, is to use the extra time on the ball that they have on clay, to set up for their groundstrokes and hit as punishing of a shot for the opponent as possible and as early in the rally as possible. These shots have to be:

1. Deep,
2. Angled,
3. Loaded with topspin.

They can be a combination of these or all together. The aim is to get your opponent out of position or force out a weak reply. It is a lot harder to take the ball early because of the higher bounce and unpredictable nature of bounce on clay. It is also harder to hit winners or force errors with flat lasers.

So…what makes a punishing shot?

Like mentioned before all great clay court players have long and not very compact strokes, very solid groundstrokes on both wings, a lot of spin on their shots on both wings and a consistently deep and heavy ball.

The dead give away should be the long strokes, as this is the most direct consequence of the way their rackets are set up. They all use a high swing weigh rackets with very high ceilings, and these really shine when you have a lot of time on the ball, either because of a slow court or because of your great movement.

To best understand how you can raise the ceiling of your racket to suit your needs or to meet the requirements to be dangerous on clay check the whole chapter »THE ESSENCE«. Here is just a short extract from it about swingweight:

1. High swingweight smoothes out the strokes and it makes almost impossible to just arm the ball with bad technique. That is because the racket has a higher moment of inertia and you have to generate more momentum with your hand to get it moving and small deviations of your hand movement and muscle action don’t affect the racket head position and path so much.
2. Derived from the first point this translates to less maneuvrability and longer reaction times for volleys etc.
3. Higher swingweight usually means lover MGR/I and that gives you the feeling that you are dragging the racket through the contact, and not pushing it. It gives you the feel of carving around the ball and giving you more control.
4. More control and consistency also comes from the fact that with a higher swingweight you can swing at lover swing speed to get the same amount of power and spin.
5. High swingweight also means you need longer strokes to accelerate the racquet. Think about Rafael Nadal and Alexander Zverev (Novak Djokovic is also here but not so extreme). They both have hight swing weight and low MGR/I, and they have long strokes, especially on the forehand side, and they play with incredible control and consistency. On the other side of the spectrum is, for example, Nick Kyrgios. Low swingweight, hight MGR/I, short strokes, incredible racquet head acceleration but a lack of consistency, because when he get’s tight, the slightest deviations in his stroke mechanics cause a much bigger change in the racquet head position at contact. On the other hand, Nadal and Zverev when they get tight their only job is to get the racket through the contact and the ball goes in. They spend much more energy doing that, but they can go in the »lockdown« mode and not miss.
6. I generally advocate that players use as high of a swingweight they can play with, but without mistiming the ball when the matches get longer. It’s important to know your limits because a higher swingweight won’t be beneficial if it tires you or you can’t accelerate the racket enough before the contact.
7. Higher swingweight is less forgiving and requires you to have better footwork, because of the longer strokes. Your positioning has to be better because you can’t make quick adjustments to your swing path.
8. Higher swingweight can mean more spin (again if you can swing it). The racket has more angular momentum during the contact consequently more kinetic energy in the vertical direction, which means strings can move more and snap back, and impart more spin on the ball. Also, more angular momentum at impact means less deformation of the racket and more energy can be transferred to the ball (rotational and kinetic energy).
9. Rackets with higher swingweight have a higher ceiling in a perfect world. Humans are not perfect machines in a perfect world, so we need to compromise and making compromises is the real artistry of racket modifications. That’s also where MGR/I comes in to play, which is basically a measure of compromise between mass, swingweight and balance.

And now let’s take a look at the racket specifications of the mentioned players to see how they fit into this »high ceiling« rackets on clay.