Monte-Carlo: with the Paris 2024 Games at Roland-Garros, will the clay court season be different?
Clay fields in the foreground, a blue horizon in the second. Monday April 8, the clay court season is, like every year, launched during the Masters 1000 in Monte-Carlo. But in this Olympic year, the land season will be somewhat modified. If Roland-Garros usually marks the end of the season on ocher, this year it goes into overtime.
Indeed, after the French Open which ends on June 9, the grass season will take its rights like every year until the Wimbeldon final on July 14, before returning to Parisian soil for the players qualified for Olympic Games. A sequence of the calendar, but above all an equally rapid change of surface. “We do not have the choice”, responds straight away the Dane, 7th in the ATP, Holger Rune, all smiles.
“It will be very interesting to see how all the players deal with this situation, confides the Italian Jannik Sinner, 2nd in the world. This won’t be easy, because it’s a surface where I usually have a little trouble. It’s quite unique to tackle clay again after grass. It will be important to adapt the preparation. Often the first week we have strange results on dirt, so the change in surface is going to be interesting. The time on hard court was really good for me, now we’ll see what I can do on clay.”
The return to clay for the Olympic Games is not anecdotal. Before Paris 2024, we have to go back to the 1992 edition in Barcelona to find Games on ocher. All subsequent editions were played on hard court, with the exception of London in 2012 which opted for the grass of Wimbledon. However, an advantage of the calendar, the London grand slam ended two weeks before the start of the Games, allowing ideal preparation for the players ahead of the Olympics. In Paris 2024, the situation is different, since between the Parisian Major and the start of the Games, the grass season is interspersed. A more complex calendar to manage this year, where usually grass is the perfect transition from demanding rallies on clay to hard, faster surfaces.
“Indeed, it is more complicated but it is not something foreign to us, Novak Djokovic slices at the microphone of France Télévisions. As tennis players, we are used to it. We change the surface almost every week for the different tournaments. Adaptation is a quality that must be developed for any player.” supports the Serbian, world number one, who made the Olympics one “real objective” this season. Same observation for the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, 3rd in the world. “The sequence will be difficult, but we are used to playing in different conditions every week and we have to adapt our game as best we can week by week.”
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