At Roland Garros, the Clay Holds Secrets
The French Open is underway, and I must admit: I do find there to be something romantic about the clay courts of Roland Garros. Maybe it’s just the Paris of it all. But there is something else as well, a deeper metaphor for the sport of tennis—as if clay reveals something pure about the game. Each match starts with a court that is spotless, and then, shot by shot, the movements of each game reveal itself. The three spots where the server bounced the ball readying himself on the baseline. The smudge of the sliding return. The two dots where the drop shot fell unreachable.
“The clay,” said Felix Auger-Aliassime, the 21-seed in this year’s men’s singles tournament, “is alive.”
But there is a funny thing I learned this week about the clay of Paris.
It’s not actually clay at all.
The red clay of Roland Garros is actually the dust of thousands and thousands of bricks. Made at the same manufacturer, Supersol, for the past fifty years, Supersol collects defective bricks from throughout the year and then uses a special machine to crush them and then turn them into dust. Then, that dust is sent directly to Roland Garros.
At Roland Garros, that dust then becomes the responsibility of 54-year-old Bruno Slastan, who leads the 162-person groundcrew team. Slastan has been in charge of these courts since 1989, but if you’re picturing a pompous Frenchman, you have the wrong idea. Slastan shows up to work in Iron Maiden t-shirts. Yet he does respect tradition. “To become a good court man,” he said, “you need five years.”
It's a process that has been passed down to Slastan throughout the years. And in fact, clay courts have their roots in France. In 1880, a pair of brothers operated a tennis court in Cannes, and at the time, every court was made of grass. One summer, the heat became overbearing, and finding no way to keep the grass from wilting, they covered them in powdered terra cotta. Like that, a new playing surface was born.
Each of the 20 courts at Roland Garros require 1.1 tons of the crushed bricks—over 20 tons in all for the three weeks of the tournament—but they are only a small part of the whole story. There are actually five layers that make up each clay court: the brick only represents 2 mm (0.08 inches) at the very top. Then, there are 4 inches of ground limestone, 4 more inches of crushed coal, followed by several feet of crushed gravel and finally, larger stones.
Slastan and his team prepare the courts every day, but their real work comes during breaks in play, where they sweep the canvas clean to start the process anew. They work in perfect synchrony, sweeping and raking, like an F1 pit crew. “We have one minute, 30 seconds,” Slastan says, “but we usually need just 1’10 or 1’20.” At hardcourts such as the ones used at the Australian Open or the US Open, there’s not much work to maintain each court throughout the tournament. Even at the hallowed grass of Wimbledon, where the groundskeepers are revered, once the courts are mowed and prepared ahead of play, there’s not much else that can be done.
But at Roland Garros, the courts are always changing. Maybe that’s the magic.
⚾ We have an update on last week’s story! The Birmingham-Southern Panthers advanced to the College World Series last week. That means they will play their first game of the tournament at 4:45 ET today—the same day that their school will close forever. Good luck to the Panthers!
🎾 If you’re a fan of the clay, the New York Times ran a lovely photo essay on the surface last year.
💜 Any list of greatest fans of all time has to include Prince, whose love of Minnesota basketball was wonderfully captured in this essay by Ohm Youngmisuk for ESPN.com this week.
🧢 Pretty amazing news this week as the MLB officially added stats from the Negro Leagues to the record books. If you want more perspective, Kevin Blackistone penned a nice column for the Washington Post. The change means that Josh Gibson is the official all-time leader in batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS. Now, we just need the MLB to make one more change, recommended by Gibson’s son: rename the MVP award the Josh Gibson Award!
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