Though the Florida men’s tennis team enters the weekend competing in a tournament for the fifth time this fall, it will still face a new challenge to overcome—playing on a clay court.
Senior Billy Federhofer, redshirt freshmen Gordon Watson and Thomas Proisy and freshman Luke Johnson will be taking their talents to Orlando this weekend, as they will compete in the 2012 UTSA Clay Court Invitational at Disney.
Gators’ coach Bryan Shelton understands the different obstacles that present themselves while playing on clay rather than a hard court like Alfred A. Ring Tennis Complex, which is where the team practices. The first difference, to him, is footwork.
“Your footing is a lot different,” Shelton said. “You slide into shots as opposed to running though the ball or planning and hitting the shots.”
The second is the speed of a clay court, or lack there of.
“Clay court is much slower than a hard court, so working on staying a little bit more disciplined and patient is really important,” Shelton said. “There are not as many offensive opportunities as there are on a hard court, where the speed of the ball through the court is more of a factor.”
With these two differences, playing on a clay court causes different tactical strategies to arise.
Shelton said rather than positioning one’s self closer to the baseline from getting pushed back too far like on hard court, players automatically need to start getting their feet further back than their normal ready position.
Players also tend to focus on perfecting a heavier topspin on the court to push their opponent even further out of position.
After pushing them so far back, one of the typical strategies is to use a drop shot since players will be already much farther back than on a hard court. A good drop shot will go just over the net, landing close to the net.
Shelton believes a culmination of all these strategies lead to a win on clay.
“The key is not to over power your opponent too much but really utilizing the angles, utilizing the touch and short balls, utilizing some heavier top spin balls to help push them out of position to create openings in the court that you can finally expose,” he said.
