French Open 2024: Did you know the clay courts at Roland Garros aren’t actually made of clay?

Let’s play a game. What comes to mind when we think of clay? For many tennis lovers, the answer is Roland Garros or the French Open. The second tennis grand slam of the year is upon us, the first round begins today (26 May), and tennis players, enthusiasts and fans are all gearing up for one hell of a tournament. After all, this might be the ‘King of Clay’ Rafael Nadal ’s final time playing in Paris.

However, what if we told you that the beautiful red clay surface at Roland Garros where we see our favourites sliding and slipping their way to victory isn’t made of clay at all?

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Here’s how the ‘incroyable’ courts at Roland Garros are prepared and maintained for the tournament. And if you thought winning is difficult, maintaining the grounds is a task, worthy of a trophy of its own.

Only clay court Grand Slam

The French Open, also known as Roland Garros in honour of the aviation pioneer and sportsman with the same, is the only tennis grand slam that is played on clay. While Wimbledon is played on grass, the Australian Open and the US Open — played at the beginning and at the end of each year — are on hard courts.

Clay courts with no clay

The courts at the French Open are unlike any other surface where tennis athletes perform. Ask players and they will tell you themselves. In 2007, Maria Sharapova said that she felt like a “cow on ice” playing at Roland Garros. Even tennis legend Martina Navratilova has said of clay courts: “On clay, you have to hit a lot of balls to win matches. If you’re not quite 100 per cent confident, it really shows up. It’s harder to win matches when you’re not playing well.”

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The Roland Garros courts are made up of five layers, each around 80 centimetres in depth: the first is made up of stones, followed by gravel, clinker (volcanic residue), limestone and finally a thin layer of crushed brick about two millimetres thick, giving the courts their ochre hue.

Groundsmen at the French Open note that the two main layers of the playing surface are limestone and brick. In fact, of all the layers, the crushed red brick, which is right on top, is just two millimetres deep. This is then followed by seven-10 centimetre of limestone. Clinker comes next being seven-eight cm deep and then there is the biggest layer, crushed gravel, which makes up 30 cm of the court. The last layer is the draining material.

But for those wondering how did this all come about? It’s coincidence. A New Yorker report states that tennis, which was first played on grass, came to France in 1878, at Cannes, thanks to a pair of English brothers; the climate wasn’t quite right for grass, so they crushed up some bricks and covered the court. Thus, terre battue or as the English would say, clay courts.

Preparing the courts

Organising the grounds for Roland Garros is as difficult as playing on clay. As per Bruno Slastan, the former head groundsman for French Open venue Roland Garros, getting the 32 courts that stretch from the training complex, away from the prying eyes of the spectators, to Court Philippe Chatrier, the main stadium court, with its ivy-covered architecture, is a back-breaking, arduous effort.

Work on the courts begin months before the tournament and the 11 clay-court craftsmen are then assisted by another 175. For prep, workers use shovels to fling the red brick across the court’s surface, then compress the layers with several different types of rollers. They use a hose to wet the courts, and then do it all over again. It’s repetitive, backbreaking work.

In fact, a whopping 88,000 pounds of broken brick are hauled in for the tournament. The groundsmen state that each court takes two to three days to prepare, with Court Philippe Chatrier, the Centre Court where the finals are played, is prepared last.

Once the courts are prepared, there’s also a daily routine to follow while the tournament is on. At 6.30 am, every tournament day, crews slide off the overnight blanket on the courts and scrape them to “standardise the broken brick” and then spread calcium chloride overtop the brick to encourage the brick to stay wet and retain its red colour. Even amid matches, the groundsmen sweep the courts between every set and brush the lines. And at the end of day’s play, the groundsmen carry out an intense watering.

As per a Sports Illustrated report, the maintenance regiment is the same for all the courts. However, the crew has to pay more attention to courts 3, 4, 5 and Suzanne Lenglen because all four courts are built on concrete slabs — “it is dangerous when it rains”— that can make water drainage a bit tricky.

A challenging surface

While the red courts at Roland Garros are beautiful to look at, playing on them is a whole another ball game. It is considered to be a slow, slippery surface where athletes have to grind it out in longer rallies, thus earning it the title of being one of the most challenging tournaments to win.

Players complain that the surface dulls the speed of serves and groundstrokes and magnifies the effect of heavy spin, creating higher arcs as the balls come off the ground. As some note that the French Open, like the French, favours creativity over power.

Katerina Siniakova, a Grand Slam doubles champion who beat former world number one Naomi Osaka in the third round in Paris while ranked 42nd in 2019, has said of playing on clay: “You have to really win the point. It’s not as easy as the hard courts to win a point, because it’s not so fast. A more creative player can play better on clay and use it as an advantage for them. You can’t use as much slice or drop shots on hard courts.”

So, strap in for the next two weeks of tennis excellence that will unfold on the terre battue.

With inputs from agencies