India’s captain Rohit Rajpal said what he saw in the new surface: the idea is to slow the game down and get a relatively low bounce. Sumit Nagal prefers surfaces with a high bounce to build his baseline game. And a slow court can reduce the impact of Dhakshineswar Suresh’s very big serve.
« They resurfaced the court with a lot of thought and intelligence, clearly trying to counter our two players », Rajpal said.
Silly question, but are you allowed to redo the floor just before the guests arrive? Nobody around me seems shocked, so I assume the answer is yes. But what does that mean? In which other sport do you redo the pitch based on the opponent’s right arm?
And it’s not a one-way thing. Rajpal himself pointed out that India have hosted visitors on grass, sometimes against players with almost no experience of it. So the man describing the trap has also set a few.
There’s a second detail I hadn’t seen coming. According to Rajpal, the balls swell quickly as the games go by, slow down and get heavier. A ball that grows while you’re playing with it. I wrote that in my notebook and read it twice.
So the surface slows down, and the ball does too. By the end of the match, technically, what happens? Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
The Indian team arrived in Seoul early enough to get used to the conditions. The winner of the tie goes through to the Final 8 in Bologna, from 24 to 29 November. In the previous round, South Korea beat Argentina 3-2 in Busan, with decisive wins from Soonwoo Kwon and Hyeon Chung, and India knocked out the Netherlands by the same score.
It’s true, we checked: Tennis Actu.
