Here is how the speed of the courts of the US Open changes with the new surface

In March, the USTA announced an agreement with the Laykord company to renovate its tennis courts, leaving the Decoturf company with which it had collaborated for over 40 years and which had always been involved in American hard courts. The new courts will be characterized by an acrylic resin on an asphalt or concrete base of absolute avant-garde for what concerns the resistance to external climatic agents and above all to humidity.

The implementation of the project was entrusted to Advanced Polymer Technology which, with its flagship, aims to neutralize the meteorological variables normally affecting the performance of the fields and the speed of the ball. Furthermore, these courts should allow the player to have fewer problems in moving and a decrease in injuries related to the hardness of the surface that often puts a strain on the joints when changing direction.

The first sensation you get from playing on the new fields respects what you suspected: a faster speed of the ball. What was not expected was the big difference from the past. The new fields are much faster, as confirmed by Danny Zausner, director of operations at USTA. The tennis players who are participating in the Masters 1000 in Cincinnati, which is played on the same courts as the US Open, have had the opportunity to try the new surface, something that was not possible to do at the Miami Masters, where it was not possible to test the change of material due to the health emergency triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

https://www.laykold.com/us-open-gallery: here you can see all the photos of the installation of the new covering

Laykord, the new surface for the US Open courts

Usta sources stated that in June, the Laykold surface was sent to Serena Williams to be installed in her private field, allowing her to get used to the new mantle for the American tour. "We have done tests and measurements, obtaining a CPI of around 43, which allows us to qualify as a fast midfield," he told SportsBusinessDaily. "They are between 20% and 30% faster than last year and that's what we were looking for with the change," Zausner said.

It must be remembered that the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments are the ones that publish the CPI of their tracks and, analyzing the results, it is obvious that the tracks of the US Open 2020 will be faster than those of all the tournaments in that category. This data was obtained thanks to the information provided by TennisTV and Matthew Willis, who during the Masters 1000 tournaments showed the CPI and which led to these figures.

The data refers to the fields of 2019:

Canada: 42.8 London: 41.6 Shanghai: 40.9 Paris: 40.6 Cincinnati: 37.4 Miami: 36.5 Indian Wells: 32.1 Monte Carlo: 30.3 Madrid: 27.9 Rome: has not been released

Note: 20-30 is slow; 30 to 35 medium-slow; 35 to 40 on average; from 40 to 45 medium fast and over 45 fast.

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3gExgYR