Rafael Nadal would like to achieve a better balance between events on sand and hard court. Sam Stosur supports this idea.
Although Samantha Stosur may have celebrated her biggest success in 2011 with winning the US Open on hard court, the Australian is also extremely comfortable on ashes: The last three of her nine titles on the tour so far have been won by Stosur (2015 and last year in Strasbourg, 2015 in Bad Gastein, Germany), plus a final appearance at the French Open 2010 (defeat against Francesca Schiav).
Stosur therefore appreciates the loose ground – and is able to take advantage of Rafael Nadal’s complaints. The Spaniard, still the leader in men’s tennis despite his injury-related elimination from the Australian Open, had recently criticised the imbalance between the events on sand and hard court. The number of tournaments on the latter would be too high for the players.
Stosur explained in Melbourne that she could not say whether the current situation was significantly worse than it was a few years ago, but:”Our season’s focus was obviously on the hard court, at least seven months.” In between a very short lawn playing time and the events in front of Roland Garros before,”I don’t know how something like this could become reality,” Stosur continued.”We are wearing a Grand-S on this underground.
For the Australian, it is perfectly understandable that Rafael Nadal prefers to play on sand, because this would suit his body.
In fact, the men after Wimbledon still have the chance to collect points for the tournaments in Hamburg, Gstaad and Kitzbühel, for the women in Bucharest and also in Gstaad. However, experience over the past few years has shown that most of the top players are putting their first appearances on hard ground after the season’s climax on London’s Church Road to prepare for the US Open.