In preparation of yet another clay-court season, the world No. 90 said she adjusted her fitness and practice regimes accordingly.
“My [practices] get a little bit longer than usual,” she told Baseline. “Usually on hard court[s] you start, stop, go back and stop. Clay is softer and [matches are] longer, so we practice a little bit longer … In the gym it’s similar. You do weights, but you don’t do [heavy] weights. But a little bit longer, [a] little bit lighter.”
The name of the game on clay is endurance, since points and matches drag out a lot longer than they do on hard courts. For a clay-court champion like Schiavone, there’s even more to it than that. It turns out that the quality and type of clay isn’t the same at every event.
“It’s not easy, because clay-court tournaments [do] not [have] very good clay,” she said. “Just in Roland Garros, the best courts have very good clay where you slide and you stop. In the other tournaments you slide and you keep going. You lose a lot of meters to come back and play again.
“I would like for the courts to improve [the clay] a little bit.”
The differences in texture make strategy and preparation tricky for even the best clay-court players.
“It’s the quality,” Schiavone said. “It’s something in Rome they decide to put. It’s not clay; it’s small rocks. So the ball goes faster and you can’t stop after you slide. I am technical.”
A former Roland Garros champion has the right to be technical.
It’s not rocket science that it takes a lot more exertion to stop your body from moving in one direction if you’re sliding out after the shot. You lose time recovering from those lost steps before getting back into the point. It’s time to lengthen practices and hit the gym.
