Laurie's Tennis articles

Last week we took a look at the best male players. Now let’s take a look at the best female players since Hard Courts became an important feature of Professional Tennis. All of the players here are current or former world number 1 champions. Showing once again that to be the very best, you have to excel on hard courts because it’s played so often throughout the Tennis season, both indoor and outdoor. Kim Clijsters Whenever I think of Kim Clijsters I think of Andre Agassi. Kim hasn’t achieved anything near as much as Agassi, but she certainly shares one thing in common which is her love of hard courts. Clijsters has won 41 titles and 29 have come on hard court. So like Agassi, three quarters of Clijsters’ titles have come on hard courts. Putting aside the statistics, what reminds me of Agassi is the way Kim approaches hard court matches. Clijsters seems to have faith in the bounce where she knows there will not be any bad or strange bounces that you would get on c...

As we are presently in the heart of the North American hard court season, it's time to take a look at some of the greatest hard court players of the Open Era. I will take a look at the greatest male champions first, analyzing their achievements, games, and what made them great on the surface. In the next article I will focus on the great women hard court players of the Open Era. There have been some dominant players on the surface in the Open Era, especially since the late 1970s to mid 1980s, when most grass tournaments were pulled up and replaced with low-maintenance hard courts. The rise of hard court tennis coincided with the introduction of graphite rackets and the transition to the modern power game. The Australian Open is the most high-profile example of this. They switched from grass to rubber hard courts called rebound ace in 1987 and then switched to a medium-paced plexicushion hard court in 2007. Ivan Lendl Ivan Lendl is a player that has consistently been pre...