Carpet court

A carpet court is a type of tennis court. The International Tennis Federation describes the surface as a "textile or polymeric material supplied in rolls or sheets of finished product".[1] It is one of the fastest court types, second only to grass courts.[2] The use of carpet courts in ATP Tour competitions ended in 2009.[3] In women's tennis, no WTA Tour tournaments have used carpet courts since the last edition of the Tournoi de Québec in 2018. ATP Challenger and ITF circuit level tournaments with carpet courts continue to exist up to the present (2023).

A carpet court in Kraków, Poland

Types

There are two types of carpet court. The most common outdoor version consists of artificial turf with a sand in-fill. This type of carpet court became popular in the 1980s in British and Asian tennis clubs for recreational play as they were easier and cheaper to maintain than grass courts.[4][5]

The other type used predominantly for indoor tennis is a textile surface of nylon or rubber matting laid out on a concrete base.[6] They came in many kinds of synthetic materials, from different sources, which led to the tennis tournaments and organizers (WTA/ATP) typically identifying and labelling carpet courts by their brand names such as Greenset, Supreme or Taraflex.

Carpet courts have been used in venues which are not normally used for tennis or other sports, such as the Royal Albert Hall in London.[7][8] Players usually approach such courts as they would a grass court due to both being similarly fast surfaces.[9]

Professional tournaments

The ATP Finals, WCT Finals, U.S. Pro Indoor, ECC Antwerp, Kremlin Cup, Paris Masters and Zagreb Indoors tournaments were all once played on carpet.[10] In 2009, the governing body for men's professional tennis, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), decided to end the use of carpet courts in top-tier tournaments.[3] ATP spokesman Kris Dent said the most important reason for the change was to standardise indoor competitions to hard courts which he said will reduce the risk of injury.[3] A number of players including Mario Ančić and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga criticised the move stating that professional tennis needed carpet courts for players to develop their ability for playing on fast courts.[3] The last event played on carpet courts on the WTA Tour, the Tournoi de Québec, ended after the 2018 edition. In the 2019 WTA 125K series, the only tournament played on carpet was the Taipei Open. The developmental ATP Challenger Tour still has several carpet court events.

References
  1. "Surface Types" (PDF) ITF. Retrieved 27 March 2020.
  2. Simon O'Hagan (27 April 1996). "A magic carpet ride for Henman". The Independent. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  3. "La ATP prohíbe jugar en moqueta en el 2009" (in Spanish). Mad a. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  4. Tarran, Bruce (2013). George Hillyard: The man who moved Wimbledon. Troubador Publishing Ltd. p. 127. ISBN 978-1780885490.
  5. Littlewood, David (2012). Metric Handbook. Routledge. p. 18. ISBN 978-1135140656.
  6. "Surface descriptions – Carpet". ITF. Archived from the original on 2 May 2019. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  7. John Roberts (4 December 1997). "Tennis: McEnroe ready to relive drama of fire and ice". The Independent. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  8. "London 1999". ITF. Archived from the original on 21 September 2016. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  9. "How to adapt to different tennis surfaces and conditions". The Guardian. 28 June 2009. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  10. "Carpet Court ATP Tour Tennis Tournaments". Tennis.wettpoint.com. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
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