Andrea Kemmerer and his team build tennis courts worldwide, not only for tournaments or Davis Cup and Fed Cup matches. The Vienna Stadthalle was also about meeting the tournament favourite Dominic Thiem.
tennisnet: Mr. Kemmerer. Jürgen Melzer meant after his victory against Milos Raonic that the court in the Wiener Stadthalle would let the slice jump off nicely low, the topspin very high, so that the court would play very well. That’s nice praise, isn’t it?
Kemmerer: That is certainly a correct statement. This medium grain size, which we have chosen, should reflect exactly what Jürgen said. The court takes the spin, depending on how the ball is played by the opponent. We then speak of the so-called “True Bounce”.
tennisnet: Have you changed anything here in the Stadthalle compared to the last few years?
Kemmerer: Just a little something. We have trimmed the place a little towards St. Petersburg as far as possible.
tennisnet: … where Dominic Thiem won a few weeks ago. Whereby all other conditions here are clearly different than in St,. Petersburg, are we?
Kemmerer: Exactly. But I’ve always said that: what we can influence, the grain of the soil, is only a small part of how it really plays out. Other factors such as the balls, the humidity play at least as big a role.
tennisnet: Some players have reported that the balls here are not easy to play.
Kemmerer: I only noticed at the very first training how fast the balls open. And this naturally results in greater air resistance.
tennisnet: How will the course change during the tournament week? The players have been training here since the Thursday before the tournament starts.
Kemmerer: The place can no longer be the same as it was a week ago. We coated the place on Sunday, then it had only three days to harden. Because when it is fully played, it is dry – but not really hard yet. This means that when the players enter their long periods of slipping, a relatively large amount of shoe abrasion remains in the pores. And more dirt always means that the place gets faster.
tennisnet: The German Tennis Federation announced on Thursday that the Davis Cup against Hungary will again be played in Frankfurt. In the last few years they have built the places for the DTB. Is Frankfurt a good choice?
Kemmerer: I think the biggest problem for the organizers in Hamburg is always to find a hall. Handball, basketball and ice hockey simply take advantage of the large multifunctional halls, especially in February. Surely it is difficult to find anything over two weekends. I haven’t heard from the DTB yet, but I knew that Frankfurt was one of the two candidates. All I know from the DTB is that the following week at the Fed Cup in Braunschweig we’ll be covering the place with our rubber again.
tennisnet: After the last Davis Cup of the men against Belgium in Frankfurt there has been criticism of the course condition.
Kemmerer: It’s perfectly clear that when you lose a match or the entire encounter, you’re looking for explanations. If the players didn’t feel as comfortable as they had wished, that’s a shame. But from our side we have done exactly what we should have done: namely to make the surface as similar as in, respect, St. Petersburg.
tennisnet: There Alexander Zverev had won his first tournament on the ATP tour in autumn before …
Kemmerer: It was then said that the ball had been very fast. The DTB referred in its criticism to the ITF Court Pace Rating, which is demonstrably not always accurate. We had already had measurements where the course was slower after a week than before. And that’s actually impossible. The opponent of course played optimally back then, but if I consider how close both Philipp Kohlschreiber and Alexander Zverev were to the victory against Steve Darcis, the question of guilt would be a bit far-fetched.