Pay Dirt

At this time of year, a fan following the pro game might start to believe that there's a clay tennis court around every street corner in Europe. Across much of the United States, though, the surface is a rare, and rarified, phenomenon. You don’t see clay often as you travel from town to town or neighborhood to neighborhood. Asphalt, worn thin and frequently cracked, is the cheaper and more convenient surface of choice at the vast majority of public facilities. So when you do happen upon a neatly swept and brightly lined clay court, typically at a private club beneath a canopy of leafy tree branches, it can look exotic and idyllic, a soft cushion against the game’s harder edges. At the very least, clay creates a unique, cement-free world for tennis players only.

For a young player in the States, the effect of playing on, and trying to slide across, a clay court for the first time can have a strong effect; it’s not every day we have the chance. I can date my youthful love of tennis to a summer vacation my family took to Vermont when I was eight. Our house for the week came with a rectangle of Har-Tru on the side—a backyard court of our own was almost too good to be true.

It wasn't just this court's surface that was different from the ones I played on at home. For one thing, the fence didn’t have a bar at the top; the wiring just crisscrossed its way up and stopped. This style isn't uncommon at tennis clubs, but I’ve always associated it with that single court in the New England mountains. It felt free and easy there; we weren’t barred in from above.

More intriguing still was the gear that came with the court. Hanging from the fence was a huge broom and a long, mysterious stick of metal with wheels and a circular brush at the bottom. This was, I discovered after pushing it until it began to squeak, a line cleaner. I also discovered that cleaning the court, seeing its bumps smoothed over with the broom and its lines bright white after being dusted with the brush, was almost as much fun as playing the sport. I may have been happiest when a match was over and I could pull the broom down and race around in circles with it.

On clay, you came, you dug up the court, you swept it clean, and you left it in the same pristine state in which you had found it in the morning. You had a part in creating the surface you played on, which drew you more deeply into the game.

Of course, actually playing on this surface was cool, too. That week, with a little more time to hit the ball, I found out that the batter’s swing I used in baseball translated into a decent two-handed backhand in tennis (I bat right-handed in baseball and play tennis left-handed). I have a vivid recollection of how good it felt to connect with the ball and have it sail over the net. This was also the first time I can remember keeping score and playing sets against my dad. The fact that I spent the week losing all of those sets 6-0—I went something like 0-72 in games—didn’t bother me. Just being part of any score, even if I mine was zero, was exciting. Besides, the thrill of swinging through a backhand and making the ball go over the net overrode everything else and launched me into the sport.

Back home in Pennsylvania, the public courts were cement, but a local private club had four made of Har-Tru. That was it, four courts and a pavilion for shade, nothing as extravagant as the town’s official country club up the road. Playing there I got a feel for the surface, and may have developed a more Western grip on my forehand than was absolutely necessary. I tried to mimic the European pros and learn to slide, but could never master the tricky art of judging where the ball was going to land and letting myself glide into it—I couldn’t let myself go. There’s a limit, perhaps, to what Americans understand about tennis, and that limit seems to be the patience and footwork that’s needed to win on clay. Now that the game on other surfaces has grown closer to dirt-ball—the pros even slide on asphalt now—it’s not surprising that the U.S. has struggled.

As a junior player in the 1980s, though, it wasn’t the slide you needed to master. It was the moonball. I learned that when I was 14, at the state’s biggest end-of-summer junior tournament, which was played on clay—the green stuff—at the Philmont Country Club outside of Philadelphia. Philmont had dozens of courts; they were set in tiers on a hillside, and surrounded by what I remember as a lavishly landscaped golf course. At the top of the hill, the area’s best players, all of them sporting the status symbol of the day, a Fila warm-up suit, hobnobbed on the clubhouse patio. There were two courts next to the patio, with full sets of bleachers; when you played there, you knew that all eyes were on you.

My first match in this intimidating environment was, naturally, scheduled on one of those two main courts. My opponent, from Western PA, was rumored (correctly) to be a pusher and staller, and the thought of the collective elite of Philadelphia junior tennis watching us in full moonball mode for hours was enough to make my palms sweat even before I walked out there. So I was happy to see that a showdown between two highly-ranked older players had been scheduled for the court next to ours; surely this audience would have no time for us.

For the better part of two hours, they didn’t. And why would they? As I suspected, our match quickly devolved into a dirt-ball pushfest of the highest, or lowest, order. It was certainly among the slowest. My opponent, three decades before tennis’ current shot-clock debate, checked his watch between each point; but rather than doing it so he would hurry up, he did so he could slow down even more. After each rally, he meandered back to the baseline, often with detour to inspect the back fence or push a leaf out of the way, before making his elaborate preparations to serve. He never tossed the ball before the maximum 30 seconds had elapsed—he seemed to have it down to the millisecond. I won’t try to describe the points themselves, except to say that they never ended. Some of them required three or four trips to the net before the ball was successfully put away.

In retrospect, it was only a matter of time before the Fila-wearing bleacher creatures noticed the epic drama that was being staged under their noses. Sometime in the second set, as my opponent and I lofted our shots back and forth, a ball from the next court rolled into the back of ours. Neither of us stopped the point. A few, or maybe a few dozen, shots later, another ball rolled into the back of our court, this time on the other side. By now it was too late to start the point over, so we kept going. The problem was, the match next door was now down to one ball. So the two players stood, hands on hips, and waited for us. The crowd waited with them. And waited. And waited some more. With each stroke of ours, they gradually grew quieter, until silence reigned as the ball continued its high-arcing path back and forth across the net.

Finally, I missed. Just hit the ball into the net for no reason. I’ve never received a louder roar on a tennis court. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a roar of appreciation; it was a roar of laughter. I can remember looking over at the bleachers and seeing one well-known older kid with his head in his hands. My opponent and I went back to our respective fences and gave the two balls back to the guys on the next court. Then we returned to our marathon.

I don’t think my opponent or I would have chosen to play this way for three hours, but that was the dynamic we found ourselves caught up in. It was also one that we had learned from TV. In those days at the French Open, before outright winners from the baseline were common, the pros often camped out somewhere in the vicinity of the Bois de Boulogne and launched moon shots at each other.

I lost in the end, but the experience helped me get a better understanding of what it takes, as far as patience and stamina go, to win a tennis match. Clay, it turned out, wasn’t a cushion against the game’s rougher edges; it was a surface that exposed those edges and forced you to confront them. Big shots and smooth technique weren’t the point here; the winner would be the player who could, physically and psychologically, endure.

Despite the defeat and absurdity of the way the match was played, my memories of that afternoon are good ones. I enjoyed the long periods of silent solitude at the baseline, with only my effort for company. What else is tennis, anyway, but that? I also enjoyed the recognition, even if it was derisive, from the in-crowd of Philly junior tennis. I had, if nothing else, made them wait.

Yesterday, when I walked outside and onto a warm Manhattan street where the trees were newly in bloom, the vision that came into my mind was of a pristine clay court, waiting to be dug up and, if I’m lucky, slid across. Spring is here, which means outdoor tennis is here, which means another seven months of dirt-ball is about to begin.

The courts at my club, like most courts in New York, are clay. I still love to play on it, especially because it’s not so bad for my back and my knees. When we’re done with a match, we brush the court and clean the lines, with the same type of equipment I used in Vermont years ago. I don’t run to pull the broom down off the fence anymore, but there’s still nothing like walking on, or walking off, a freshly swept clay court.