I might be misunderstanding but doesn't the failure of this blue clay really come down to poor drainage and wacky weather in the end? If they didn't play a part, couldn't it in theory have played the same as red clay (apart from the salt factor)?
@@BenosTDG I was thinking the same thing. Strip away those factors and blue clay would probably have given the players the same experience. I think change is a hard thing to accept in tennis, imo
Changing the court from green to blue to increase the contrast with the ball made sense in the case of hard courts. I didn’t quite understand why Tiriac would do the same with clay. You forgot to mention balls used to be white and being able to see a white ball on green surface was no harder than seeing a white ball on red clay. Why not go back to white balls instead?
Only acceptable as long as the surface is not only safe enough, but also conditions are similar enough to the Slam it builds towards. It would make more sense to have such a modified slippery surface right before Wimbledon rather than French Open. Overall, safety is the number one priority.
@@cachi-7878 changing the color of the ball actually makes a lot more sense in this case. Since the surface for clay is somewhat of an orange red color, the best contrast would be somewhere between blue and green. White also makes sense. Whether that would visually appeal to viewers is a different story.
So let me get this straight: the court had poor drainage and particularly bad rain followed by hot sun which baked the clay, then they tried to use salt to get rid of the moisture, and that became a slippery surface on top of the clay... and people think it was because the clay was blue?
Right I was thinking the same thing, and changes had to be made to the material as well, so it wasn't even technically the same material to begin with.
My late dad is a tennis player himself and he often watches tennis matches on TV. I remember how he comments about Federer's over-the-top screams and celebrations. Ngl I feel like I'm being watched now.
I don’t play tennis and have no idea why YT recommended this but great job in making it interesting cause I had a great time learning about poorly drained clay being shaft because of its color.
Same I think it’s funny a whole bunch of people who know next to nothing about tennis me included now have a strong opinion on blue clay 😂 can’t wait to run into some tennis fanatic who hates blue clay.
I mean... it actually sounds like a perfectly good idea... same playing properties (in theory) and easier to watch. Sounds like the extreme heatwave, poor drainage, and salt application were the real downfall.
@@CULTTENNIS You didn't really mention that in the video tho... You spoke about how all the players were complaining but you didn't ever say that the blue clay was a fine substitute for regular clay. I think everybody inferred what @WE ARE TEMPORARY said, but you never say in the video that poor circumstance is the only reason blue clay isn't currently used
Andrew Fink the actual construction and the weather ‘ruined’ the tournament and then some players decided to throw their dummies out of the pram. A poor court not poor clay made it a bit of a struggle. Imo this wasn’t a balanced analysis of the issues at all.
I think that you are underestimating the importance of color in a surface which is exposed to the sun for several hours. I don't know for sure what exactly caused the differences between the blue and normal clay, but color shouldn't be Tamed for granted. It would be interesting to see some kind of tests between them tho
@JohnnyBlackRants You sound like any typical pool player, but then the best pool player I ever met was a pro tennis player before he left Highschool. He's pretty despicable.
After all that, I’ve come to the conclusion there was nothing wrong with blue clay. It was the crap sub surface and drainage, and the stupid idea of chucking salt on it to help dry it.
got to laugh at them banning it, its like banning red painted walls because the first time they tried painting a wall red the building collapsed because the concrete was poorly constructed and an earthquake hit.
I mean with red clay they wouldn't even have had the need to salt it, just wait without the fear of the pigment washing off. Also it's much more easily available and cheaper so it's really just a gimmick change that didn't pan out.
@@Butcho22 Based on absolutely zero evidence. If we're going to blame the blue clay, we should at the very least do some test instead of listening to players that began to complaining even before the tournament started. Pretty close minded of them, if you ask me.
It sounds like blue clay was only tried once, ,disdained immediately by some top players for purely aesthetic reasons, and had its first attempt spoiled by other variables, such as weather, drainage, and salt.
It's also a solution in search of a problem. Changing from green to blue improved the viewing experience. But clay already contrasts well, there was no reason to change it other than a gimmick.
I didn't look into it, just getting information from the video. It sounds like color wasn't the issue. It was the salt, but they only used the salt for it because they wanted to protect the color. If it was normal red clay, they don't need to salt it. Ultimately the process of preserving the color gave certain type of players a lot more advantage. If red clay without the salt, giving that much advantage, it would resulting clay surface entirely ban. I do think, they should try to give the blue clay a chance in a indoor facility (I am not sure if indoor uses clay)
@@joehernandez9563 So? What the hell, its a color. If it looks different, who cares, besides ass holes? This is a joke and tennis should be embarrassed by it.
@Bender Bending Rodriguez the clay can most definitely lose its color overtime. whiles its probably slower than the died blue clay the iron oxide would still be washed away overtime all the same
The blue colorant was the culprit there, but I assume with more research and engineering using modern technology, it could be made to be almost exactly identical to regular clay.
@@DaveMiller2 I'm not sure about that because the colorant for blue Clay is different from iron oxide which is already built into the bricks that the clay is made from. But just because they used salt that year, doesn't mean there wasn't another way to keep that clay dry that wouldn't have made the surface slippery.
Couldn't agree more, very well researched :) always wanted to know why they changed it to blue clay.. thank you so much for giving insight into this :)
it was banned because how hard it was to keep the color uniform after a hard rain. The rust color is baked in, so it stays uniform. The blue was (according to a documentary outside this video) top coated and Not Baked in. So they had to oversalt the court to keep the color from washing away. Then the sun baked the slurry and the salt became little impregnated rollers in the clay. It's less the color and the extreme lengths needed to keep that color put and even then it failed as you can see the dye on the uniforms of the players after a few matches on it. If they had access to Blue Bricks to crush, then the color would have been less a hassle to keep in the clay since the clay itself would be blue through out. But I'm only going with information from that documentary that shown how the clay was made step by step and the problems arising from it.
@@AsmodeusDHare I wish this was more explicitly stated in the video, he glossed over it and basically made it sound like people just didn't like blue clay for its color.
The problem wasn't the color itself. It's the fact that, since blue clay doesn't occur naturally and needs to be dyed, rain and watering will wash away the color over time, so you need to take measures to prevent certains parts of a blue clay court from gradually becoming white, and this will inevitably change the composition of the surface. That's what happened in Madrid. In the US, green clay courts are quite popular. It doesn't need to be dyed since green clay is not actually "clay" but a greenish type of naturally occuring basalt, which is already slightly harder and thus, slightly faster than traditional red clay. But the difference isn't big enough to force players to radically change their playstyle, just requires some practice to adapt. With all the measures needed to prevent dyed blue clay from losing its color, under harsh weather conditions the surface becomes a lot harder and faster than even the hardest green clay courts and at the same time becomes a lot more slippery than a clay court usually is. This fundamentally changes how clay tennis is played, which is something that nobody really wants.
By the sound of it, it wasn't an issue with the actual blue clay, but with the weather, the court, and the methods used to maintain the court in said weather. Someone please bring blue clay back!
Honestly I dont see any issue. Different players had different success on different surface. It is still the same for everyone so sucks for you if you cant adapt.
They used salt to stop the dye from being washed out which caused it to become slippery. The rust which makes the red cant be washed out so you never need to salt on a red clay court.
If the issue was not being able to see the balks on green courts, Why not just change the color of the balls? Seems like a cheaper and more sensible alternative.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it has to do with the player's perspective. Changing the ball color might make it easier to follow on a top-down camera, but harder for the players to follow from their POV. No clue, though, that's just a guess.
@@mangekyuby7940 well no it’s because the salt used to keep it blue during rain solidified and turned to almost a hard court slippery court which help Federer’s game a lot, now does it sound like a fun surface yes but not for Madrid
This is one of those times where someone could easily say "what was that dude thinking?" but honestly I feel bad for him. His heart is absolutely in the right place, it is just really unfortunate that it culminated in a bad experience when all he was trying to do was make the tournament more unique and easily viewable.
TheThreatenedSwan TheThreatenedSwan exactly. I’m surprised he didn’t have scientific tests run on the blue clay to prove that the players were just tricking each other into blaming the color of the clay for the poor surface condition and thus their performance. If I’m going to invest into something like that then at the very least I’d try to make an appeal to ATP regarding an undeserved ruling on blue clay if not taking legal action against ATP. but that’s not to take away from the fact that despite investing in a concept like blue clay there was seemingly no attempt made towards better maintenance of the court surface. Seems a tad half-baked either way you look at it but then again I’m not the one investing the money and resources so who am I to really say.
I met mr. Tiriac quite a few times-wow he is intimidating when you first meet him- just the way he speaks and holds himself..but he is truly a kind man
@Tom R These people don't care about sexism. They just hate beautiful women. It's the same with the track girls in formula 1 racing. Lots of girls lost their jobs because of some feminist that probably don't even watch the sport.
Uncle Vee speaking of blue clay, I had a crazy idea for a tennis court. Have one tennis court be four different surfaces at the same time. Similar to that grass and clay court that Federer and Nadal played on back over a decade ago. One quarter would be grass, one quarter hard court, one quarter blue clay and one quarter red clay and have the blue clay and blue hard court at a diagonal from one another to make the colors look cool (and then of course the red of the clay and the green of the grass and the other parts of the court) but yea just had this idea a couple weeks back lol who knows if it would work and I’m sure would be super expensive but I’d like to see them try something like this. And I’m right there with you that they need to keep trying new different crazy ideas and court surfaces, etc.
I remember seeing highlights of the 2012. Madrid open on ESPN. That’s what opened me open to events outside of the grand slams. Up to that point I had no idea they had a full season of other tournaments. That Blue Clay made me really wanna see more tournaments and that’s what got me to follow the sport closer
@MUFC There are only 194 countries on this planet (so no, soccer isn't massive in over 240 countries). It is still the most popular sport. Next after that is cricket (by number of people watching and playing).
@MUFC first of all it’s called football. and football fans like you make us fans look bad when it comes to subjects on other sports, just fucking zip your mouth and keep watching your trash ass mufc
Indeed, In cricket when game shifted from test to one day (day and night) format. They didn't changed the whole playground's colour. Instead, they changed the cricket ball's colour from red to white.
Man, you're an awesome tennis historian. I played back in the day, even though I don't follow tennis as much as I used to, its fun to hear from people like you. Adding in humor makes it so much better. I've binged your videos right now, with this being my 3rd.
@Shreyas Misra in the video says that, yeah, but they don't give any reason why it wasn't going to happen if it were red, bc first, the iron oxide don't change the surface, b they really used the salt to drain faster the surface, bc if it were to don't lose the color it going to happen anyway, and they can use other solution to make it without it going to be crystallized...
Through all these years, no one has thought of or experiented with changing the color of tennis balls to make it a better contrast to the red clay courts that players prefer? What about experienting with dyes & other additives to red clay that doesn't involve the expensive bleaching process?
As a tennis player, the neon yellow is the best for seeing the ball. It would be a hard and annoying adjustment for it to be any other color. And I find it hard to think of another color that is as striking as the neon yellow
@@timeluster Green Clay is still used in one WTA tournament. It's only a Premier 470 but it's still a top tour level event. Carpet was used until 2018 on the top levels, still used at Challenger level.
@@timeluster Charleston Open. The clay is made from Amphibolite rather than red brick. It results in a sort of bottle green colour that slightly harder and faster than Red Clay, but it still scuffs and spins like a clay court.
I think it was all about mindset, I’ve played basketball in shoes that are flatter than a sheet of plywood. Sure I nearly rolled my ankle trying to stop a couple of times but I was still my beastly self on defense.
Not, there is a reason why Federer was better in grass than clay. Is not only about the mind, the physical conditions determines your chances of winning.
Surfaces impact the speed of the bounce...and how players move. It changes the dynamic of a match enough to give a group, with a certain playing style, a big advantage. Federer's attacking playing style benefits from a faster court. While Nadal is the opposite. He benefits, significantly, from a slower court. Clay is a slow court.
In the video itself they say the conditions of blue clay favoured the playstyle of Federer, it's not his mindset, surely all players had given it a try
It's intriguing how the colour of the surface has been correlated with the performance of said surface, even though the two are unrelated. If the proponent of Blue clay ensured excellent performance of his blue-coloured surface compared to traditional playing fields, Blue Clay may have been upheld as the superior tennis play surface as opposed to the inferior one.
They are related because to change the color you have to change how the clay performs: They change the properties of the clay to make it blue, so the ball bounces different and the players have trouble maintaining balance, affecting the performance of the players.
@@totetoresano and the ball bounces differently on grass and hard courts, so why would a slightly different type make a difference? The bad move was the salt. That's it.
@@scottg3192 The ball bounces differently on those courts yes, but ultimately that means there's only three broad compositions that players need to be familiar with. I'm unsure if you're the kind of person to follow esport's, but its a situation that comes up in that more than traditional sports due to how mutable the games in it can be. Prior to the world tournaments in games like league of legends, if the patch it is played on has significant changes, then players and teams who were better at the style of play in regular season might fall off. Blue clay, without iron oxide is a less robust clay mixture, more prone to being affected by weather changes, which necessitated the need for salt. There is a reason why every other year with normal clay they did not run into these issues. And if you forgive me for completing this nerd as fuck explanation, that affected the meta of the game, it changed the way the tennis players had to play . Which meant that aggressive players were at an advantage comparatively to defensive players. This is especially exacerbated by the fact the salt crystalized after the practice on the court a week prior, which meant that they had a very short amount of time to adjust. Its just bad practice especially in a major tournament.
@Vingul . The problems the players had could have happened with red clay, namely the salt crystallization and weather hard packing the surface. The colour dye vs the red oxide had no bearing on the court performance, it was Just a colour they were used to.
London is built on Blue Clay, great to tunnel through. Don't know if it's any good for bashing balls around on though. PS: Though called blue it's more of a dark grey colour.
The blue clay was BEAUTIFUL on TV. If they could work out the technical kinks I'd like to see it brought back. ALSO, there need to be more (men's) tournaments played on Har-Tru/Green clay courts. Growing up on them was good enough to get Chris Evert seven titles at Roland Garros. My vote is for Miami to open the clay season in the US.
It's more like changing the servers to another continent instead of LAN for a tournament. I mean, considering the weather and poor maintenance, it would happen the same to red clay
or maybe, it’s bc of exactly what this guy said in the vid that the blue dye means the colours not naturally occurring, and requires preserving w salt to keep colour, making the courts more dangerous. while the red from iron oxide is naturally occurring so needs no salt. maybe watch the vid next time 😀
@italkcrab What color is optimal depends entirely on how it contrasts the rest of the image. A red clay field could use neon green, but Cyan would be optimal. For a green field, a red or magenta ball would be far easier to see than a neon green one.
I played the sub 12 tournament that year, and let me tell you, it wasn’t that bad, I had a great time playing there and I thought the blue clay looked cool
@@aMolleTargate Considering the problem had nothing to do with the color of the clay, other than the fact it might have contributed to the use of salt to protect that color, the "professional competitors" were bitching about the wrong thing. They should have used this opportunity to highlight the real problem of those courts, which was the poor drainage. This same issue would have occurred had the surface been traditional red clay instead of blue, but because heavy rains followed by an extreme heatwave happened to coincide with a change in surface coloring, they blamed the coloring for the problem because they were already predisposed to hating it. tl;dr: the "pros" complain about the wrong issue and get something they irrationally hated banned for no reason
@@vetrix215 You didn't hear what was said about the salt. It was used as a desiccant to try and dry up the moisture that accumulated. The pigment had nothing to do with the way the surface ended up.
@@gothnate If you actually listen to him the reason they had to get rid of the moisture was to keep the colour, if it had been red they would not have had to add salt
@@gothnate ok. Clay was blue because it was dyed. They added salt to keep it blue since otherwise, it would just turn white and to avoid that they added salt so moisture is drawn out and clay can keep its colour. Red clay is just a crushed brick as he said and they don't lose colour therefore they wouldn't use salt if it was red. Same would have happened if it was any other colour that was dyed. It is not well explained in the video but that is why they did it.
Im gonna explain this for everyone. I am from Madrid and about 2012 I was living like 100 meters away from "The Magic Box", the compound where Madrid Open was played. Main sponsor since the birth of Madrid Open has been Mutua Madrileña, an insurance company that have blue and white as corporative colours. Tiriac had the idea and his main sponsor was delighted(the company was making a push then to get out of Madrid to become nationwide). Mutua Madrileña used this as a platform to grow and agreed to pay more sponsorship money to Tiriac(at the same time other sponsors as L'Oreal, Samsung and other brands had raised sponsorship money for Tiriac). This wasnt revolutionary, this was a marketing campaign guys and Tiriac won huge
I don't see how any of these issues is related to the clay being blue; poor drainage and the salt crystallizing is what made it awkward and slippery. Seems to me like people don't like change, and used the unrelated circumstances as an excuse to hate it.
Well the video did say they used salt to retain the colour of the clay. So basically, in order to keep the clay from turning white they used salt which led to crystallization. I do see your point though, I think some athletes have this belief that because they've played 1 way all their life when it changes, it's just not the same anymore.
@@thomasemment9291 Yes, but that wasn't the only reason. If they hadn't used salt it would still be slippery because wet clay gives you roughly the same traction as ice.
players have legitimate reason to dislike _any_ change. after you're trained thousands upon thousands of hours at a single activity, your brain becomes hard wired to every little detail about it, so changing something as innocuous as court color actually confuses your instinctive brain a lot. the problem, and this is not at all exclusive to tennis players (or even sports players) is that they have no fucking idea how to voice their criticism and will make up completely bogus reasons to validate their opinions.
I think the blue clay is an interesting change of pace. Everyone expects the expected and the blue clay is like a new map in a video game. Sure it's unwieldy, but it adds something different that you need to be more mindful of.
No. What ruined the playability of the courts was adding salt to the courts so that the blue dye in the clay didn't bleed out. This wouldn't be necessary with red clay that is naturally colored.
@@nathangamble125 cause no one wanted to see the cursed blue clay again hahahha.... If the King of Clay was disrupted by this, it must be very unattractive.
@@jarrettpeeples9745 you're picking on a single issue. The salt was added to dry the court AND to protect the color. Seems like they may have tried the salt anyway. Using salt to absorb moisture on a court is what should be banned it seems
First off, I definitely think time passes quicker now due to our fast paced lives and technological distractions. Seriously though, it blows my mind to think that 8 years from 2020 to 2012 is the same amount of time that passes between 2010 and 2002. Crazy
When you realize that Djokovic, Nadal and Federer still make up the top3, well not officially but kinda since Federer didn't play at the US Open and that's exactly where Thiem got his jump on him. And still, no player other then the Big4 has sat at the nr2 spot for 700+ weeks.
Here’s the weird thing - I don’t play tennis? I don’t even really CARE about Tennis? But I’ve been seeing this in my recommendations, and now I’ve started binging your videos, because I have a genuine fascination for the interesting minutiae of niche subjects I haven’t really been involved with before, and your presentation style has made this look into a world I wouldn’t normally be interested in both entertaining and enlightening! I always love to hear from people who are well-researched and passionate about their field, whatever it is, and I think after this I may pay attention to the sport a bit more! ^w^
I remember one year Mattress Mack here in Houston flew in the same clay they used at the French open for the US Clay Court Championships and it was a nightmare. It just didnt work the same way the in the Houston weather and players got weird bounces all week. I felt like it was a lot more slick in our weather than what I see on TV during the French open.
from your description of the surface, it sounded like the problem wasn't the blue clay itself, but rather the construction and maintenance of the court. It looked fine from a tv perspective.
One of the first pro tennis events was played in Australia in the 1960s, with Roche, Ralston, Laver, Gonzalez and others, on an outside, polished wooden court surface. I remember watching it as a little kid, not sure there's even a single pic or comment about it anywhere, but it happened.
Mence it seems that weather conditions played a bigger factor in the safety than the color of the clay. I doubt there would be noticeable difference if it was implemented correctly
From someone who doesn't watch or know much of anything about tennis, very good job of the video. Interesting and grabbing title and thumbnail image. Good editing and writing. All around, you made a subject that doesn't personally interest me much, fascinating.
Outside of the Grand Slams a wide range of materials are used for court surfaces, some of the more exotic of these are carpet and wood, it wouldn't surprise me if someone tried to make one of these the default court for an ATP tournament.
It always amazes me that they went through all the trouble and expense to change the color of the court so people could track the ball better, rather than just changing the color of the ball
Courts are permanent, balls are temporary. Wimbledon alone uses more than 54,000 balls. Also the tennis players are all used to following the yellow ball - it's a very easy color for our eyes to track and that's the reason it was changed to yellow in the first place.
I would love to see different colored clay surfaces tbh. I'd be more inclined to watch. Love tennis on all surfaces but idk blue clay was such a cool concept I wish it worked out
Basically...yes. Him and Djokovic cried and cried and cried. The moment offensive players started winning matches and making the later stages of clay events, it was changed.
@@kwl189 lol it wasnt clay,it wasnt tennis,it was impossible to move on it and not only Nadal and Djokovic hated the surface,it was just non tennis and weird
@@sebkosk 😂 couldn’t have been that hard to move on it. The tournament went ahead and players had long rallies on it. Nobody cried more than those two.
Fritz Jackson did you watch the video? They used salt to prevent the colour to change into white since it's dyed clay. The colour will fade if it gets wet so they used salt to make sure it doesn't fade.
@@mic-shellcrackson3800 They also used it to keep the court dry. Anyway, the problem wasn't the color of the clay, but weather prevention methods. Switch methods and there wouldn't have been any issues.
Meanwhile football refuses to use technology like sensors or strategic cameras the referees could check before taking a decision… so we are left with 22 people abusing foul play.
same thing with cricket, they rarely use the tech . its good in a way because it maintains tradition and simplicity so that people outside the proffesional scene can play with the same environment @@biazacha
This doesn’t make any sense. The only difference was the color, that means that a red clay court would have suffered the same thing given the same circumstances. So it was the weather not the color, that made things different. All this is according to the article.
If I understand correctly due to how blue clay courts are made, it made it more susceptible to becoming more uneven then red clay courts. With red clay they had the same problems but with blue clay it was more severe.
The first 90 seconds gave me depression already. Dude could not only play ice hockey, tennis and table tennis on a professional level but also made a career in banking and build an empire as a side gig
buddy did you watched the vid ? DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THEY CHANGED RED TO BLUE peoplle would riot if they changed that lime ball to fucking purple or oranage or someshit
It's simple, a tennis ball is green/yellow very flashy so that the player can see it and react rapidly. A darker ball, or any other color is less visble.
How is the blue clay's fault ? Similar things would've happened if red clay was used. Seems like it was banned only because the losing players couldn't accept their losses and wanted a scapegoat.
They already wanted a scapegoat before the blue clay was even made, as you can see by the stupid and childish comments from top players “grass doesn't become orange“
@@commonviewer2488 They didn't do it only to keep the clay blue, they also did it to keep the moisture away. Listen again to 5:17 ,so still sounds like it was more a fault of bad drainaige than the clay being bue.
@@Etherion195 The funny thing is grass gets somewhat yellowish orange hue in autumn and in dry/summer season when they wither. Shows you how out of touch are some of these athletes
@@commonviewer2488 You would think they would just sweep up the salt after it dried the court. This seems like blue clay was the scapegoat for poor maintenance though if there is a scientific reason blue clay was at fault the narrator could of done a better job of presenting the reason.
You say that it was exactly the same, just replacing the natural pigment with a different color. That the problems were due to drainage and weather and care procedures. So wouldn't the court have had the same issues had the usual clay been used? Why did they simply ban the color (irrelevant) rather than condemning the poor drainage conditions, or mandating proper care procedures for particular weather conditions? Of course, *now* they can work in-camera magic and make the court and ball contrast nicely on TV, regardless of what it looks like in person. BTW, I remember when tennis balls were white. Things _do_ change over time.
The problem wasn't the color itself. It's the fact that, since blue clay doesn't occur naturally and needs to be dyed, rain and watering will wash away the color over time, so you need to take measures to prevent certain parts of a blue clay court from gradually becoming white, and this will inevitably change the composition of the surface. That's what happened in Madrid. In the US, green clay courts are quite popular. It doesn't need to be dyed since green clay is not actually "clay" but a greenish type of naturally occurring basalt, which is already slightly harder and thus, slightly faster than traditional red clay. But the difference isn't big enough to force players to radically change their playstyle, just requires some practice to adapt. With all the measures needed to prevent dyed blue clay from losing its color, under harsh weather conditions the surface becomes a lot harder and faster than even the hardest green clay courts and at the same time becomes a lot more slippery than a clay court usually is. This fundamentally changes how clay tennis is played, which is something that nobody really wants.
@@himanshuadhikari9758 if the clay is Post-Firing Ironclays that are ground down, you could create a bright blue clay by performing the iron extraction processes before rather then after the firing processes and replacing it with ultramarine, and that would result in an equally durable pigment rather then just painting your clay.
@@F14thunderhawk yeah I was pondering metallic blue pigments myself.... Azurite was the first to come to mind for me though. Not sure if sunbaking would cause it to turn green though.
@@mbartelsm The salt was added so that the color wouldn't drain away. Reminder that red clay is naturally red due to the iron content, so it wouldn't need the salt. Blue clay had the color added artificially, so salt needed to be added to preserve it
@@dragoxphere3341 The salt was added so that the clay would keep out moisture. It's important to keep out moisture to keep the clay blue. But it's not necessary to use salt. They had a water drainage system, but it was shitty.
I feel like a lot of these issues were solvable, take a year off the tournament and really work on it, bring it back the following year. I say it should get a second chance.
@@crgiganti8827 Like I said, there ARE a few traditioaal tennis lovers. Besides it was slick as hell and people who had to slide a lot couldn't play on it. Clay isn't cement.
Doesn't explain why blue clay had the issues due to it's change in color. It seems like this problem was irrelevant to the change from red to blue and the only complaints stemming for a boomer "back in my day clay was red" type of mentality.
It's still clay, but the material will still be different. Then they added salt to the surface to dry it out, which made it slippery. The complaints were justified.
@Manek Iridius 5:17 the salt was added as a deterrent to moisture so as to allow the clay to retain its color. If the clay were naturally blue and not in danger of being bleached by water the slipperyness would not have been a factor.
@@Sigefreadthebulmunk Salt had nothing to do with the colorant. Where are you getting this claim? We're not talking about painting dyes here. "Bleached by water", another extremely stupid remark.
I wouldn't call Federer a "heavy hitting baseliner". Yes he can hit a hard ball, but he is much more about quickness around the court, getting to the net and precision in his shots
Federer is an agressive baseline player. He is more known for making amazing passing shots against opponents who come to the net. When his opponents like roddick comes to the net, he doesn't. He played s&v with Pete and that's just about it.
What's your take on Blue Clay? I vote we bring back some new wacky surface color for 2021!
I might be misunderstanding but doesn't the failure of this blue clay really come down to poor drainage and wacky weather in the end? If they didn't play a part, couldn't it in theory have played the same as red clay (apart from the salt factor)?
@@BenosTDG I was thinking the same thing. Strip away those factors and blue clay would probably have given the players the same experience. I think change is a hard thing to accept in tennis, imo
Changing the court from green to blue to increase the contrast with the ball made sense in the case of hard courts. I didn’t quite understand why Tiriac would do the same with clay.
You forgot to mention balls used to be white and being able to see a white ball on green surface was no harder than seeing a white ball on red clay. Why not go back to white balls instead?
Only acceptable as long as the surface is not only safe enough, but also conditions are similar enough to the Slam it builds towards. It would make more sense to have such a modified slippery surface right before Wimbledon rather than French Open. Overall, safety is the number one priority.
@@cachi-7878 changing the color of the ball actually makes a lot more sense in this case. Since the surface for clay is somewhat of an orange red color, the best contrast would be somewhere between blue and green. White also makes sense. Whether that would visually appeal to viewers is a different story.
So let me get this straight: the court had poor drainage and particularly bad rain followed by hot sun which baked the clay, then they tried to use salt to get rid of the moisture, and that became a slippery surface on top of the clay... and people think it was because the clay was blue?
blue = water = wet/slippery
yes, people really are that dumb.
red = hot = dry.
so they think red is superior...
The salt had to be used because if it wasn't, the color would've washed out. That's the problem, not the color as such.
Right I was thinking the same thing, and changes had to be made to the material as well, so it wasn't even technically the same material to begin with.
Did you watch the video?
@@ComandanteJ It wasn't clear, dude. Even if he watched the whole thing.
I don’t even play tennis, but this appeared in my recommended for some reason, I still watched it...
Same. I've never even searched for Tennis on RUclips in my life.
I clicked because the thumbnail really intrigued me
My late dad is a tennis player himself and he often watches tennis matches on TV. I remember how he comments about Federer's over-the-top screams and celebrations.
Ngl I feel like I'm being watched now.
lmfao same
even if you did youtube wouldnt kno-
wait its owned by google, nvm they most likely would
yh crazy coincidence for you
Federer, the undisputed king of Blue Clay
Hahahahh. Great comment
Forever!!! :)
Has a nice ring to it :)
Fed doesn't even care the color. He proved who the winner is in the totally new sit. Fed, the true GOAT not just a king of any specific court surface.
d0s25 Both Nadal and Djokovic are better than him
I don’t play tennis and have no idea why YT recommended this but great job in making it interesting cause I had a great time learning about poorly drained clay being shaft because of its color.
Same I think it’s funny a whole bunch of people who know next to nothing about tennis me included now have a strong opinion on blue clay 😂 can’t wait to run into some tennis fanatic who hates blue clay.
I mean... it actually sounds like a perfectly good idea... same playing properties (in theory) and easier to watch. Sounds like the extreme heatwave, poor drainage, and salt application were the real downfall.
yes we have to bring it back!
@@CULTTENNIS You didn't really mention that in the video tho... You spoke about how all the players were complaining but you didn't ever say that the blue clay was a fine substitute for regular clay. I think everybody inferred what @WE ARE TEMPORARY said, but you never say in the video that poor circumstance is the only reason blue clay isn't currently used
Andrew Fink the actual construction and the weather ‘ruined’ the tournament and then some players decided to throw their dummies out of the pram. A poor court not poor clay made it a bit of a struggle. Imo this wasn’t a balanced analysis of the issues at all.
Reah everything seems to be chalked up to the clay when really the only explanation given was weather and court construction.
I think that you are underestimating the importance of color in a surface which is exposed to the sun for several hours. I don't know for sure what exactly caused the differences between the blue and normal clay, but color shouldn't be Tamed for granted. It would be interesting to see some kind of tests between them tho
Blue clay objectively looks better. Great contrast between ball and court. It’s a shame that factors totally unrelated to color got it banned...
They could always change the color of the ball
it just seems like an unecessary problem
“Objectively looks better”
Hilarious
Naw you trippin
@JohnnyBlackRants You sound like any typical pool player, but then the best pool player I ever met was a pro tennis player before he left Highschool. He's pretty despicable.
Grass doesn't become orange? Clearly they haven't seen my lawn during the summer time LoL 😂
Haha nice one
That was hilarious!!! Mine lawn too during summer.. 🤣
Hahahaha they have lawncare they don’t know about it lol
I like to keep mine soft and green for the summer orgies.
You guys have lawns?
After all that, I’ve come to the conclusion there was nothing wrong with blue clay. It was the crap sub surface and drainage, and the stupid idea of chucking salt on it to help dry it.
got to laugh at them banning it, its like banning red painted walls because the first time they tried painting a wall red the building collapsed because the concrete was poorly constructed and an earthquake hit.
I mean with red clay they wouldn't even have had the need to salt it, just wait without the fear of the pigment washing off.
Also it's much more easily available and cheaper so it's really just a gimmick change that didn't pan out.
So I just watched a tenis match in Australia 2022 that had blue clay (Ashleigh Barty v Amanda Anisimova) so I guess this video is wrong anyway
@@YorkshirePud-rpg That´s not clay... that is regular hard court.
it sounds like what they should have baned was putting salt on a clay court
I don't even watch tennis but this got recommended randomly so here's a like
Right. Lmao
Me too
Same
Same
Same
The color actually had nothing to do with it, it just was the weather and poor maintenence
the removal of the iron oxide likely played a factor as well
@@Butcho22 no
pulsar_ not at all
@@Butcho22 Based on absolutely zero evidence. If we're going to blame the blue clay, we should at the very least do some test instead of listening to players that began to complaining even before the tournament started. Pretty close minded of them, if you ask me.
@Cuck cloo That is not what he said, the salt was in an effort to reduce moisture, it had nothing to do with the color of the clay.
It sounds like blue clay was only tried once, ,disdained immediately by some top players for purely aesthetic reasons, and had its first attempt spoiled by other variables, such as weather, drainage, and salt.
It's also a solution in search of a problem. Changing from green to blue improved the viewing experience. But clay already contrasts well, there was no reason to change it other than a gimmick.
I didn't look into it, just getting information from the video. It sounds like color wasn't the issue. It was the salt, but they only used the salt for it because they wanted to protect the color. If it was normal red clay, they don't need to salt it. Ultimately the process of preserving the color gave certain type of players a lot more advantage. If red clay without the salt, giving that much advantage, it would resulting clay surface entirely ban.
I do think, they should try to give the blue clay a chance in a indoor facility (I am not sure if indoor uses clay)
@@joehernandez9563 Except that it didn't contrast as well as blue did. Your comment is a designation searching for an uncatagorized situation.
@@brahtrumpwonbigly7309 the normal red clay did contrast well
@@joehernandez9563 So? What the hell, its a color. If it looks different, who cares, besides ass holes? This is a joke and tennis should be embarrassed by it.
Seems to me that if they had flooding and insane heat, regular clay would have similar issues.
Yes. The drainage system appears to be the real culprit, but that's under the blue clay... and don't have video of that.
@Bender Bending Rodriguez The salt was used to draw away moisture and preserve the color WHICH HAPPENED TO BE BLUE. Would have been the same with red.
@Bender Bending Rodriguez the clay can most definitely lose its color overtime. whiles its probably slower than the died blue clay the iron oxide would still be washed away overtime all the same
The blue colorant was the culprit there, but I assume with more research and engineering using modern technology, it could be made to be almost exactly identical to regular clay.
@@DaveMiller2 I'm not sure about that because the colorant for blue Clay is different from iron oxide which is already built into the bricks that the clay is made from. But just because they used salt that year, doesn't mean there wasn't another way to keep that clay dry that wouldn't have made the surface slippery.
Well researched, and well presented. Good stuff man, we need more content like this!
More to come!
Couldn't agree more, very well researched :) always wanted to know why they changed it to blue clay.. thank you so much for giving insight into this :)
Correct!
Also plexicushion
That was very informative and entertaining.
So: faced with a texture problem, ATP bans a color.
That's some 4D tennis right there.
When clay was not used properly, but the color was banned
it was banned because how hard it was to keep the color uniform after a hard rain. The rust color is baked in, so it stays uniform. The blue was (according to a documentary outside this video) top coated and Not Baked in. So they had to oversalt the court to keep the color from washing away. Then the sun baked the slurry and the salt became little impregnated rollers in the clay.
It's less the color and the extreme lengths needed to keep that color put and even then it failed as you can see the dye on the uniforms of the players after a few matches on it.
If they had access to Blue Bricks to crush, then the color would have been less a hassle to keep in the clay since the clay itself would be blue through out.
But I'm only going with information from that documentary that shown how the clay was made step by step and the problems arising from it.
@@AsmodeusDHare I wish this was more explicitly stated in the video, he glossed over it and basically made it sound like people just didn't like blue clay for its color.
The problem wasn't the color itself. It's the fact that, since blue clay doesn't occur naturally and needs to be dyed, rain and watering will wash away the color over time, so you need to take measures to prevent certains parts of a blue clay court from gradually becoming white, and this will inevitably change the composition of the surface. That's what happened in Madrid.
In the US, green clay courts are quite popular. It doesn't need to be dyed since green clay is not actually "clay" but a greenish type of naturally occuring basalt, which is already slightly harder and thus, slightly faster than traditional red clay. But the difference isn't big enough to force players to radically change their playstyle, just requires some practice to adapt.
With all the measures needed to prevent dyed blue clay from losing its color, under harsh weather conditions the surface becomes a lot harder and faster than even the hardest green clay courts and at the same time becomes a lot more slippery than a clay court usually is. This fundamentally changes how clay tennis is played, which is something that nobody really wants.
then some idiot accuses others of being smooth brained and not doing research. hypocrite lmao
i relly liked that blue clay tho. looked so pretty!
Agreed!
Yes, too bad it didn't work out...
It was like looking at techdecks on blue marble
@@CULTTENNIS im not 100% sure but isnt there a green clay turnament??
Yeah
By the sound of it, it wasn't an issue with the actual blue clay, but with the weather, the court, and the methods used to maintain the court in said weather. Someone please bring blue clay back!
Honestly I dont see any issue. Different players had different success on different surface. It is still the same for everyone so sucks for you if you cant adapt.
They used salt to stop the dye from being washed out which caused it to become slippery. The rust which makes the red cant be washed out so you never need to salt on a red clay court.
@@zemzuta7887 The salt was also used to keep moisture away. If red clay had endured the same weather conditions, would they not have used salt then?
@@comicaltuber Probably not, they still play with the same drainage and the clay has not been a problem ever since they changed it back.
If the issue was not being able to see the balks on green courts, Why not just change the color of the balls? Seems like a cheaper and more sensible alternative.
Thinking the same. Red balls on a green surface would be the best contrast
@@Crick1952 not for me lol
Tennis players probably won't stand the move, since they've trained their eyes to follow the yellow ball.
@@Crick1952 thats racist towards a specific kind of color blind people and all dogs
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it has to do with the player's perspective. Changing the ball color might make it easier to follow on a top-down camera, but harder for the players to follow from their POV. No clue, though, that's just a guess.
When you think about it, it’s cool how this blue clay caused a meta shift for the game 🤔
i think it was more like the equivalent of the nba playing on a wet court......
That's kind of what I was thinking. A way to see how adaptive and resilient a player is.
Should change the meta shift intentionally by moving on red clay and blue clay court by random every game
Of course Federer won that tournament, he's the most smart and adaptive tennis player
@@mangekyuby7940 well no it’s because the salt used to keep it blue during rain solidified and turned to almost a hard court slippery court which help Federer’s game a lot, now does it sound like a fun surface yes but not for Madrid
This is one of those times where someone could easily say "what was that dude thinking?" but honestly I feel bad for him. His heart is absolutely in the right place, it is just really unfortunate that it culminated in a bad experience when all he was trying to do was make the tournament more unique and easily viewable.
It wasnt his fault, but sometimes you gamble and lose
It was wrong place wrong time the color wasn’t the problem it was the weather
TheThreatenedSwan TheThreatenedSwan exactly. I’m surprised he didn’t have scientific tests run on the blue clay to prove that the players were just tricking each other into blaming the color of the clay for the poor surface condition and thus their performance. If I’m going to invest into something like that then at the very least I’d try to make an appeal to ATP regarding an undeserved ruling on blue clay if not taking legal action against ATP. but that’s not to take away from the fact that despite investing in a concept like blue clay there was seemingly no attempt made towards better maintenance of the court surface. Seems a tad half-baked either way you look at it but then again I’m not the one investing the money and resources so who am I to really say.
I met mr. Tiriac quite a few times-wow he is intimidating when you first meet him- just the way he speaks and holds himself..but he is truly a kind man
Rafa was happy with the models tho
Nadal’s eyes were really focused when he was resting on the bench
I was too, tbh
Everyone was, except for ugly, bitter feminist control freaks.
Your profile pic is perfect for this comment
@Tom R
These people don't care about sexism. They just hate beautiful women.
It's the same with the track girls in formula 1 racing.
Lots of girls lost their jobs because of some feminist that probably don't even watch the sport.
I really like the look of that blue clay. However they should have put some thought into how well it would perform under use.
Cool basic observation
It will perform exactly the same as any other clay. Apparently tennis players, and the organizers are q bunch of sh*t for brains morons though.
They should make a video on it
When one of the tennis plays talked about playing on blue grass I only thought of boise state lol
@Steve N it does
Tennis really needs more of those crazy ideas
Agreed!
Uncle Vee speaking of blue clay, I had a crazy idea for a tennis court. Have one tennis court be four different surfaces at the same time. Similar to that grass and clay court that Federer and Nadal played on back over a decade ago. One quarter would be grass, one quarter hard court, one quarter blue clay and one quarter red clay and have the blue clay and blue hard court at a diagonal from one another to make the colors look cool (and then of course the red of the clay and the green of the grass and the other parts of the court) but yea just had this idea a couple weeks back lol who knows if it would work and I’m sure would be super expensive but I’d like to see them try something like this. And I’m right there with you that they need to keep trying new different crazy ideas and court surfaces, etc.
@@AnthonyHirsch The problem is that different surfaces require different types of shoes.
@@darrenjohn8524 And it would also drive the players nuts
@@15Stratos ya good point. top seeds might bite the blue dust early on.
I remember seeing highlights of the 2012. Madrid open on ESPN. That’s what opened me open to events outside of the grand slams. Up to that point I had no idea they had a full season of other tournaments. That Blue Clay made me really wanna see more tournaments and that’s what got me to follow the sport closer
This is Federer's best title in his career. He was the only guy that wasn't bitching about the surface and just played as usual lmao
Federer just wants to play at this point
@MUFC There are only 194 countries on this planet (so no, soccer isn't massive in over 240 countries). It is still the most popular sport. Next after that is cricket (by number of people watching and playing).
@MUFC Literally no one fucking asked
@MUFC first of all it’s called football. and football fans like you make us fans look bad when it comes to subjects on other sports, just fucking zip your mouth and keep watching your trash ass mufc
@@kevinrodriguez2889 its called both soccer and football my guy. But I agree lol ManU trash
"how much time you got?"
He asks, more than halfway into the video.
Yeah, he could cut the bio on Tiriac down to 1/10th of what it is and I don't think anyone would complain.
Yeah there’s literally only 3m45s left, so yeah not long
@@Zeuts85 Thfiriac*
How much time you got? *Looks at timeline* oh I’d say about 2 minutes lol
@@Zeuts85 I didn't mind learning about Tiriac, he put in his research so why not?
Why didn’t they just change the ball to neon orange when playing in a green court?
That would be too cheap and simple
Indeed, In cricket when game shifted from test to one day (day and night) format. They didn't changed the whole playground's colour. Instead, they changed the cricket ball's colour from red to white.
I know , right ? Mind blown .
Wouldn’t pink balls be better for a green court? But I agree with the general premise.
@@Joenah5 Thise would be really bad for people with colour blindness
Man, you're an awesome tennis historian. I played back in the day, even though I don't follow tennis as much as I used to, its fun to hear from people like you. Adding in humor makes it so much better. I've binged your videos right now, with this being my 3rd.
I'd like to see the world burn, let's make a mossy tennis court.
Ou God
Yes but what about... blue mossy courts
@@san_juanito NOW WE'RE FREAKIN TALKIN BAYBEE
I like the idea of ice courts
Watch out I also want tennis with ice skates instead of tennishoes
blue clay looks so cool, damn you to whoever built that drain system!
So the poor drainage and weather and salt caused problems and everyone blamed it on the colour of the clay??
Shreyas Misra - they were complaining about the color before the matches even began. They were all bias against the color and blamed the loss on it.
@Shreyas Misra I have to admit: I watched the full video but also didn't hear they used the salt in order to keep the color. 🤷
@@JelleDeLoecker 5:16 - 5:22
@@gujwdhufjijjpo9740 well yeah like they all said "clay is red lmao what's next blue grass?"
@Shreyas Misra in the video says that, yeah, but they don't give any reason why it wasn't going to happen if it were red, bc first, the iron oxide don't change the surface, b they really used the salt to drain faster the surface, bc if it were to don't lose the color it going to happen anyway, and they can use other solution to make it without it going to be crystallized...
Through all these years, no one has thought of or experiented with changing the color of tennis balls to make it a better contrast to the red clay courts that players prefer? What about experienting with dyes & other additives to red clay that doesn't involve the expensive bleaching process?
...oh yeah
As a tennis player, the neon yellow is the best for seeing the ball. It would be a hard and annoying adjustment for it to be any other color. And I find it hard to think of another color that is as striking as the neon yellow
"There are three court surfaces"
Green Clay and Carpet: "Are we a joke to you?"
Yes
I have played on tarmac and indoor wooden courts too - but i think there are only 3 surfaces used professionally.
@@timeluster Green Clay is still used in one WTA tournament. It's only a Premier 470 but it's still a top tour level event. Carpet was used until 2018 on the top levels, still used at Challenger level.
@@pavarottiaardvark3431 Nice, do you know which one? I guess it plays pretty similar to red clay.
@@timeluster Charleston Open. The clay is made from Amphibolite rather than red brick. It results in a sort of bottle green colour that slightly harder and faster than Red Clay, but it still scuffs and spins like a clay court.
I feel like it was Federer's mindset that helped him win.
I think it was all about mindset, I’ve played basketball in shoes that are flatter than a sheet of plywood. Sure I nearly rolled my ankle trying to stop a couple of times but I was still my beastly self on defense.
Well, It also has to do with Gameplay. Grass IS the slipperiest court and Federer IS an ace in grass. But yeah, he's also very versatile
Not, there is a reason why Federer was better in grass than clay. Is not only about the mind, the physical conditions determines your chances of winning.
Surfaces impact the speed of the bounce...and how players move. It changes the dynamic of a match enough to give a group, with a certain playing style, a big advantage.
Federer's attacking playing style benefits from a faster court.
While Nadal is the opposite. He benefits, significantly, from a slower court.
Clay is a slow court.
In the video itself they say the conditions of blue clay favoured the playstyle of Federer, it's not his mindset, surely all players had given it a try
It's intriguing how the colour of the surface has been correlated with the performance of said surface, even though the two are unrelated. If the proponent of Blue clay ensured excellent performance of his blue-coloured surface compared to traditional playing fields, Blue Clay may have been upheld as the superior tennis play surface as opposed to the inferior one.
They are related because to change the color you have to change how the clay performs:
They change the properties of the clay to make it blue, so the ball bounces different and the players have trouble maintaining balance, affecting the performance of the players.
@@totetoresano and the ball bounces differently on grass and hard courts, so why would a slightly different type make a difference?
The bad move was the salt. That's it.
@@totetoresano go buy some more brain cells.
@@scottg3192 The ball bounces differently on those courts yes, but ultimately that means there's only three broad compositions that players need to be familiar with. I'm unsure if you're the kind of person to follow esport's, but its a situation that comes up in that more than traditional sports due to how mutable the games in it can be. Prior to the world tournaments in games like league of legends, if the patch it is played on has significant changes, then players and teams who were better at the style of play in regular season might fall off.
Blue clay, without iron oxide is a less robust clay mixture, more prone to being affected by weather changes, which necessitated the need for salt. There is a reason why every other year with normal clay they did not run into these issues.
And if you forgive me for completing this nerd as fuck explanation, that affected the meta of the game, it changed the way the tennis players had to play . Which meant that aggressive players were at an advantage comparatively to defensive players.
This is especially exacerbated by the fact the salt crystalized after the practice on the court a week prior, which meant that they had a very short amount of time to adjust. Its just bad practice especially in a major tournament.
Why YES RUclips algorithm, I am interested in blue clay on tennis courts...
One of the most random recommended videos that I still decided to watch😭😭😭 guess they know more than we credit them for
OGdienomyte850 Haha! RUclips knows me better than I know myself
"Blue clay is exactly the same as red clay but blue"
Smooth-brain Tennis players: "Blue clay bad red clay good"
"Exactly the same" yet doesn't have the same chemical composition. Strange that.
@Vingul . The problems the players had could have happened with red clay, namely the salt crystallization and weather hard packing the surface. The colour dye vs the red oxide had no bearing on the court performance, it was Just a colour they were used to.
London is built on Blue Clay, great to tunnel through. Don't know if it's any good for bashing balls around on though.
PS: Though called blue it's more of a dark grey colour.
@@Vingul found the smoothbrain lol
@@fakename287 xD xD grugbrains of the world unite bro dude xD
The blue clay was BEAUTIFUL on TV. If they could work out the technical kinks I'd like to see it brought back.
ALSO, there need to be more (men's) tournaments played on Har-Tru/Green clay courts. Growing up on them was good enough to get Chris Evert seven titles at Roland Garros. My vote is for Miami to open the clay season in the US.
Bravo its people like him who push forward new ideas. Could have worked but it didnt. More people like him please
“I’ll go to sleep early tonight”
Me at 4 am:
Holy fuck its 4:04 here
lmao i'm reading this at 4:06...I don't even watch tennis man what am I even doing here
Damn it 3 45 here!!!😂
And I was planning to sleep early too😂
This is like a game dev updating the map right before a tournament, fundamentally changing the meta of what strategies are good.
It's more like changing the servers to another continent instead of LAN for a tournament. I mean, considering the weather and poor maintenance, it would happen the same to red clay
more like updating the textures and an unrelated bug became associated with the texture change
The colour of the field makes the ball hard to see...... so instead of changing the colour balls.....we'll change the colour of the field!!!!
*stonks*
or maybe, it’s bc of exactly what this guy said in the vid that the blue dye means the colours not naturally occurring, and requires preserving w salt to keep colour, making the courts more dangerous. while the red from iron oxide is naturally occurring so needs no salt. maybe watch the vid next time 😀
@@lamusicadehairyfrog3338 he glossed over that fact so quickly that most people in the comments missed it, not totally their fault imo
He's saying they should have changed the color of the ball
They didn’t change the colour of the ball because it’s smaller than the field and less noticeable
@italkcrab What color is optimal depends entirely on how it contrasts the rest of the image. A red clay field could use neon green, but Cyan would be optimal. For a green field, a red or magenta ball would be far easier to see than a neon green one.
I'd love to see blue clay come back, sounds like they should give it another chance and see how it goes if properly maintained.
I don’t play tennis. I don’t watch tennis. I’ve never been into tennis. Yet this video was super interesting! Great work man!
Comments like these make my day! :)
Why am I watching this, I don't even care about Tennis.
you literally made me close the video because i realized that i also don't care about tennis
You right
This was recommended to me and I have never searched tennis on RUclips or Google before
Yes, why are you?
Nobody cares about tennis
I played the sub 12 tournament that year, and let me tell you, it wasn’t that bad, I had a great time playing there and I thought the blue clay looked cool
Anita - It didn't.
@@jonhohensee3258 I mean, I was 11 when I played there for the first time, so to me it looked cool😂
@@anitafumeta7254 - Not true. You hated it.
@@aMolleTargate Considering the problem had nothing to do with the color of the clay, other than the fact it might have contributed to the use of salt to protect that color, the "professional competitors" were bitching about the wrong thing. They should have used this opportunity to highlight the real problem of those courts, which was the poor drainage. This same issue would have occurred had the surface been traditional red clay instead of blue, but because heavy rains followed by an extreme heatwave happened to coincide with a change in surface coloring, they blamed the coloring for the problem because they were already predisposed to hating it.
tl;dr: the "pros" complain about the wrong issue and get something they irrationally hated banned for no reason
damn that's pretty cool
Apart from the toughness of playing on blue clay, it actually visually looks really beautiful and eye catching 🔵 👌🏼
The issues in 2012 with blue clay could’ve also happened on red clay, the color seems insignificant.
Nope. As one fellow commenter said, they used salt to keep clay blue. It wouldnt happen if it was red.
@@vetrix215 You didn't hear what was said about the salt. It was used as a desiccant to try and dry up the moisture that accumulated. The pigment had nothing to do with the way the surface ended up.
@@gothnate If you actually listen to him the reason they had to get rid of the moisture was to keep the colour, if it had been red they would not have had to add salt
@@gothnate ok. Clay was blue because it was dyed. They added salt to keep it blue since otherwise, it would just turn white and to avoid that they added salt so moisture is drawn out and clay can keep its colour. Red clay is just a crushed brick as he said and they don't lose colour therefore they wouldn't use salt if it was red. Same would have happened if it was any other colour that was dyed. It is not well explained in the video but that is why they did it.
SP - your right! They banned it because the court got wet so the losing players complained and blamed the loss on the color of the ground.
Im gonna explain this for everyone. I am from Madrid and about 2012 I was living like 100 meters away from "The Magic Box", the compound where Madrid Open was played. Main sponsor since the birth of Madrid Open has been Mutua Madrileña, an insurance company that have blue and white as corporative colours. Tiriac had the idea and his main sponsor was delighted(the company was making a push then to get out of Madrid to become nationwide). Mutua Madrileña used this as a platform to grow and agreed to pay more sponsorship money to Tiriac(at the same time other sponsors as L'Oreal, Samsung and other brands had raised sponsorship money for Tiriac). This wasnt revolutionary, this was a marketing campaign guys and Tiriac won huge
Still, it was a good idea, it just didn't have enough luck to work. Any clay would've faced the same problems, the way I understood it
Anakin’s head would’ve exploded if he had encountered blue sand.
"YOU TURNED CLAY AGAINST ME!!! I HATE YOU!" (Rafakin to the Romanian banker)
"It's hard and slippery...just like we could be if you catch my drift"
It's coarse, rough, and irritating, and it get's everywhere.
0:01 no matter where I go the song, this song follows me...
dank pods
I don’t watch tennis, I’ve never played tennis, yet here I am.
the boybrutus same
The censoring greedy a$$ yootoob thanks you.
@@kellyt5341 How is it censoring and greedy? What
I don't see how any of these issues is related to the clay being blue; poor drainage and the salt crystallizing is what made it awkward and slippery. Seems to me like people don't like change, and used the unrelated circumstances as an excuse to hate it.
Well the video did say they used salt to retain the colour of the clay. So basically, in order to keep the clay from turning white they used salt which led to crystallization. I do see your point though, I think some athletes have this belief that because they've played 1 way all their life when it changes, it's just not the same anymore.
Yup
@Bakoobie he literally said that the moisture was getting rid of the colour so they added salt, where you even listening?
@@thomasemment9291 Yes, but that wasn't the only reason. If they hadn't used salt it would still be slippery because wet clay gives you roughly the same traction as ice.
players have legitimate reason to dislike _any_ change. after you're trained thousands upon thousands of hours at a single activity, your brain becomes hard wired to every little detail about it, so changing something as innocuous as court color actually confuses your instinctive brain a lot.
the problem, and this is not at all exclusive to tennis players (or even sports players) is that they have no fucking idea how to voice their criticism and will make up completely bogus reasons to validate their opinions.
Federer has not reached the finals in Madrid since 2012, but in 2009 and 2010 he also reached the finals on red clay.
His comments on Federer were pretty out of touch with reality
@@Speedy283 Yup, the concluding dig at Federer was both vexing and completely unnecessary on the matter in question.
Lol Federer fan boys getting butt hurt, what’s new?
@@matthewl2941 Nah, just had to call out someone who was talking bullshit
@@matthewl2941 Your comment is just as beside the point. Come again, ad rem?
I think the blue clay is an interesting change of pace. Everyone expects the expected and the blue clay is like a new map in a video game. Sure it's unwieldy, but it adds something different that you need to be more mindful of.
federer is best
"its different, BUT YOU ADDAPT. GIT GUD!"
Even though he was bitching about the colour of the clay being different
You adapt when it's favorable to you I suppose :3
@@Ephraim225 wait no... You don't adapt when its favorable for you. Thats not how you adapt. 😂
@@MrRomanrin Yeah but that's the point. Federer didn't really adapt so much as get gifted a meta-game that favors the style he already uses.
Meta in tennis LULW
Petition to make tennis courts out of marble tiles and soapy water should be added on top of it
👇
Aside from all the injuries, it would probably be boring af since every player would just go for aces and win them
Im down to test that for you
@@jc-fx3rp Long rackets
Or, get this, remove the courts and have the players use jetpacks
Petition to keep tennis how it is, but just release 50 crocodiles onto the court before every match.
You know you're a good content creator when you can make someone who knows nothing about Tennis interested in tennis debacles
The TV at my gym has been playing tennis matches lately and I always see the blue court and think of this video
Ion Tariac
Internation Child Table Tennis Champion => Romanian Olympic Ice Hockey Team => Pro Tennis Player
*Parkour Parkour*
Ok, but I feel like this is less of blue clay’s fault and more the fault of the weather. I mean could theoretically the same thing happen on red clay?
No. What ruined the playability of the courts was adding salt to the courts so that the blue dye in the clay didn't bleed out. This wouldn't be necessary with red clay that is naturally colored.
@@jarrettpeeples9745 Why not just use non-soluble dye?
@@nathangamble125 cause no one wanted to see the cursed blue clay again hahahha.... If the King of Clay was disrupted by this, it must be very unattractive.
@@jarrettpeeples9745 you're picking on a single issue. The salt was added to dry the court AND to protect the color. Seems like they may have tried the salt anyway. Using salt to absorb moisture on a court is what should be banned it seems
@@TheEnoEtile they used to salt to try to keep moisture of the court BECAUSE it was going to ruin the color.
This was 8 years ago, seems like yesterday
ikr? I was just remembering watching Berdych cheating to steal a point with that double bounce live!
Berdych was amazing I was happy that he won mvp and champion
First off, I definitely think time passes quicker now due to our fast paced lives and technological distractions. Seriously though, it blows my mind to think that 8 years from 2020 to 2012 is the same amount of time that passes between 2010 and 2002. Crazy
When you realize that Djokovic, Nadal and Federer still make up the top3, well not officially but kinda since Federer didn't play at the US Open and that's exactly where Thiem got his jump on him. And still, no player other then the Big4 has sat at the nr2 spot for 700+ weeks.
Here’s the weird thing - I don’t play tennis? I don’t even really CARE about Tennis? But I’ve been seeing this in my recommendations, and now I’ve started binging your videos, because I have a genuine fascination for the interesting minutiae of niche subjects I haven’t really been involved with before, and your presentation style has made this look into a world I wouldn’t normally be interested in both entertaining and enlightening! I always love to hear from people who are well-researched and passionate about their field, whatever it is, and I think after this I may pay attention to the sport a bit more! ^w^
I remember one year Mattress Mack here in Houston flew in the same clay they used at the French open for the US Clay Court Championships and it was a nightmare. It just didnt work the same way the in the Houston weather and players got weird bounces all week. I felt like it was a lot more slick in our weather than what I see on TV during the French open.
Interesting, I did not know that! I always thought they used Har-Tru or some variant over there every year.
It’s 2 am, I need to get up at 7, I don’t play tennis, this is the life.
🤝 I wish you luck
I’ve literally never played tennis before. Why is this what my algorithm gave me, and why am I interested.
Tennis is the best, not like your nasty Messi😝
blue clay actually looks pretty sick in those action photos
from your description of the surface, it sounded like the problem wasn't the blue clay itself, but rather the construction and maintenance of the court.
It looked fine from a tv perspective.
One of the first pro tennis events was played in Australia in the 1960s, with Roche, Ralston, Laver, Gonzalez and others, on an outside, polished wooden court surface. I remember watching it as a little kid, not sure there's even a single pic or comment about it anywhere, but it happened.
I can make stuff up too.
@@jonhohensee3258 I'm sure you can. It was called World Championship Tennis, look up it, dumbass.
@@GreenDistantStar - Please stop with the flirting.
@@jonhohensee3258 don't take my word for it, ask Rod Laver. QED.
@@GreenDistantStar - You don't scare me.
"Well, how much time ya got?"
Well we're 4 minutes deep so we may as well keep going
A challenging surface, but all players faced the same challenge, and the GOAT was the master of it.....and never complained.
That thumbnail is icy af
"I hope I never play on blue grass."
Kentucky: am I a joke to you?
*sad banjo noises*
Blue grass would feel awful to play on. And then you got the horse and cow droppings everywhere.
Kentucky: Yes
My dad owned a sod farm and sold Kentucky Bluegrass. I think he'd be pretty insulted too.
Boise State: pathetic.
4:11 “Grass doesn’t become orange, it would be all strange.”
No one tell this man that brown is a shade of orange.
ok but ur not gonna tell someone their fine if their blood is hot pink
@@user-sb4fd3jt3w danganronpa: *sweats*
@@Kawn0 Monokuma rings the school's bell.
he's obviously never seen a Bronco's game lmao
Brown grass?
One of the all time greatest thumbnails in the history of RUclips. Boosted views by 100x+
I liked the blue clay. It was something different. As long as they all don’t change, I would enjoy a blue-clay tournament.
Increasing the risk of injury? I would Like a more visible Surface, but i do not want someone injury himself.
Mence it seems that weather conditions played a bigger factor in the safety than the color of the clay. I doubt there would be noticeable difference if it was implemented correctly
Clay is already red seeing the ball isn’t a problem. So theyd be using possibly more unstable clay for no benefit
And considering most courts are switching to blue or red it’s actually not something different it’s just more of the same
2:30
BogotÁ has an accent at the end.
Hearing BogÓta sends shivers down my spine damn.
He mispronounced many words.
And then right after that he pronounced Țiriac as "Thiriac" multiple times... did he just guess what the pronunciation was??
The Bogota mispronunciation is really uneducated.
From someone who doesn't watch or know much of anything about tennis, very good job of the video. Interesting and grabbing title and thumbnail image. Good editing and writing. All around, you made a subject that doesn't personally interest me much, fascinating.
Outside of the Grand Slams a wide range of materials are used for court surfaces, some of the more exotic of these are carpet and wood, it wouldn't surprise me if someone tried to make one of these the default court for an ATP tournament.
It always amazes me that they went through all the trouble and expense to change the color of the court so people could track the ball better, rather than just changing the color of the ball
Courts are permanent, balls are temporary. Wimbledon alone uses more than 54,000 balls. Also the tennis players are all used to following the yellow ball - it's a very easy color for our eyes to track and that's the reason it was changed to yellow in the first place.
I would love to see different colored clay surfaces tbh. I'd be more inclined to watch. Love tennis on all surfaces but idk blue clay was such a cool concept I wish it worked out
So lemme get this straight: Nadal didn't win on this clay so they banned it
Basically...yes. Him and Djokovic cried and cried and cried. The moment offensive players started winning matches and making the later stages of clay events, it was changed.
@randomguy8196 And it wasn't the blue clays fault, it's the poor drainage and salt
@@kwl189 lol it wasnt clay,it wasnt tennis,it was impossible to move on it and not only Nadal and Djokovic hated the surface,it was just non tennis and weird
@@sebkosk 😂 couldn’t have been that hard to move on it. The tournament went ahead and players had long rallies on it. Nobody cried more than those two.
@@kwl189 lol even Roger wasnt happy about that,its just nonsense thats why it was banned :)
I think seeing hyperoffensive tournaments using the slippery courts would be a fun side thing
So basically, the color didn't matter at all, it's the weather and weather prevention methods that fucked it all up
No. It's the salt they used to prevent the colour change
@@mic-shellcrackson3800 That's not what it was for, where did you hear that?
Fritz Jackson did you watch the video? They used salt to prevent the colour to change into white since it's dyed clay. The colour will fade if it gets wet so they used salt to make sure it doesn't fade.
@@mic-shellcrackson3800 so the rain and heat wave had no effect what-so-ever then or are we just going blame the salt used?
@@mic-shellcrackson3800 They also used it to keep the court dry. Anyway, the problem wasn't the color of the clay, but weather prevention methods. Switch methods and there wouldn't have been any issues.
honestly mad props to tennis for even letting this happen its a sport that seems to be alot more open to experimentation then others.
Meanwhile football refuses to use technology like sensors or strategic cameras the referees could check before taking a decision… so we are left with 22 people abusing foul play.
same thing with cricket, they rarely use the tech . its good in a way because it maintains tradition and simplicity so that people outside the proffesional scene can play with the same environment @@biazacha
This doesn’t make any sense. The only difference was the color, that means that a red clay court would have suffered the same thing given the same circumstances. So it was the weather not the color, that made things different. All this is according to the article.
Maybe the lack of Iron oxide has something to do with it
Exactly! Seemed like a bunch of crybabies
Probably the lack of iron and the salt they had to add to keep the colour...
Yeah, I forgot the iron
If I understand correctly due to how blue clay courts are made, it made it more susceptible to becoming more uneven then red clay courts. With red clay they had the same problems but with blue clay it was more severe.
The first 90 seconds gave me depression already. Dude could not only play ice hockey, tennis and table tennis on a professional level but also made a career in banking and build an empire as a side gig
I can sleep 14 hours a day. everyday.
now that's an accomplishment.
"Why didn't they changed the ball's colour?" My mind at 3am 🤔
Exactly my thought.
@Jason_LeCrown Colorblind people be like: U WOT M8?
just like in cricket there are different coloured balls for different conditions and formats
buddy did you watched the vid ? DID YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THEY CHANGED RED TO BLUE peoplle would riot if they changed that lime ball to fucking purple or oranage or someshit
It's simple, a tennis ball is green/yellow very flashy so that the player can see it and react rapidly. A darker ball, or any other color is less visble.
How is the blue clay's fault ? Similar things would've happened if red clay was used. Seems like it was banned only because the losing players couldn't accept their losses and wanted a scapegoat.
They already wanted a scapegoat before the blue clay was even made, as you can see by the stupid and childish comments from top players “grass doesn't become orange“
Slippery surfaces caused by crew adding layers of salt to the court to keep it dyed blue. The salt crystalized and made sudden movement risky.
@@commonviewer2488 They didn't do it only to keep the clay blue, they also did it to keep the moisture away. Listen again to 5:17 ,so still sounds like it was more a fault of bad drainaige than the clay being bue.
@@Etherion195 The funny thing is grass gets somewhat yellowish orange hue in autumn and in dry/summer season when they wither. Shows you how out of touch are some of these athletes
@@commonviewer2488 You would think they would just sweep up the salt after it dried the court. This seems like blue clay was the scapegoat for poor maintenance though if there is a scientific reason blue clay was at fault the narrator could of done a better job of presenting the reason.
You say that it was exactly the same, just replacing the natural pigment with a different color. That the problems were due to drainage and weather and care procedures. So wouldn't the court have had the same issues had the usual clay been used? Why did they simply ban the color (irrelevant) rather than condemning the poor drainage conditions, or mandating proper care procedures for particular weather conditions?
Of course, *now* they can work in-camera magic and make the court and ball contrast nicely on TV, regardless of what it looks like in person.
BTW, I remember when tennis balls were white. Things _do_ change over time.
This is how problems are caused when noone wants to accept responsibility.
Welcome to the 2000's.
The problem wasn't the color itself. It's the fact that, since blue clay doesn't occur naturally and needs to be dyed, rain and watering will wash away the color over time, so you need to take measures to prevent certain parts of a blue clay court from gradually becoming white, and this will inevitably change the composition of the surface. That's what happened in Madrid.
In the US, green clay courts are quite popular. It doesn't need to be dyed since green clay is not actually "clay" but a greenish type of naturally occurring basalt, which is already slightly harder and thus, slightly faster than traditional red clay. But the difference isn't big enough to force players to radically change their playstyle, just requires some practice to adapt.
With all the measures needed to prevent dyed blue clay from losing its color, under harsh weather conditions the surface becomes a lot harder and faster than even the hardest green clay courts and at the same time becomes a lot more slippery than a clay court usually is. This fundamentally changes how clay tennis is played, which is something that nobody really wants.
@@himanshuadhikari9758 if the clay is Post-Firing Ironclays that are ground down, you could create a bright blue clay by performing the iron extraction processes before rather then after the firing processes and replacing it with ultramarine, and that would result in an equally durable pigment rather then just painting your clay.
@@F14thunderhawk yeah I was pondering metallic blue pigments myself.... Azurite was the first to come to mind for me though. Not sure if sunbaking would cause it to turn green though.
I don't play tennis, I don't intend to play tennis, I never watch tennis matches, and yet I can't stop watching this channel
So lemme get this straight: a drainage problem and extreme weather occurred, but everyone just starts bitching about the clay...
You conveniently forgot the part where they added loads of salt which made it slippery.
@@johnmartinez7440 it made it slippery because of extreme weather. Also, that just says that salt was the problem, not the clay colour.
@@mbartelsm The salt was added so that the color wouldn't drain away. Reminder that red clay is naturally red due to the iron content, so it wouldn't need the salt. Blue clay had the color added artificially, so salt needed to be added to preserve it
@@dragoxphere3341 The salt was added so that the clay would keep out moisture. It's important to keep out moisture to keep the clay blue. But it's not necessary to use salt. They had a water drainage system, but it was shitty.
@@johnmartinez7440 Which they added the salt because of the drainage problem. Again, still not the clay.
This is a really really well done video. Thanks for doing a good job telling the story
Thank you! Appreciate you watching!!
I feel like a lot of these issues were solvable, take a year off the tournament and really work on it, bring it back the following year. I say it should get a second chance.
Agreed, along with the ATP ban, they probably just didn’t want to deal with the backlash anymore. I want blue clay to make a comeback!
Esthetically, it was horrible. Clay should be red as much as grass should be green. There are a few traditional tennis lovers..
@@helenclarke4735 Remember when people tought the earth is flat. So where would we be today if we all stick to the tradition? Oh right..
@@crgiganti8827 Like I said, there ARE a few traditioaal tennis lovers. Besides it was slick as hell and people who had to slide a lot couldn't play on it. Clay isn't cement.
@@helenclarke4735 that wasn't a clay issue, but drainage and salt issue
I honestly have 0 interest in tennis on most fronts, but man this video pulled me in. Kudos man.
Doesn't explain why blue clay had the issues due to it's change in color. It seems like this problem was irrelevant to the change from red to blue and the only complaints stemming for a boomer "back in my day clay was red" type of mentality.
It's still clay, but the material will still be different. Then they added salt to the surface to dry it out, which made it slippery. The complaints were justified.
They wanna nerf offensive players so ban of blue clay! Lmao. Indirect way to nerf someone op
@Manek Iridius 5:17 the salt was added as a deterrent to moisture so as to allow the clay to retain its color. If the clay were naturally blue and not in danger of being bleached by water the slipperyness would not have been a factor.
Ok gen X’er🙄
@@Sigefreadthebulmunk Salt had nothing to do with the colorant. Where are you getting this claim? We're not talking about painting dyes here.
"Bleached by water", another extremely stupid remark.
That multi color court was very upsetting and I don't even play tennis or watch it.
yes. it is distracting, unless it is made for kindergartens.
this needs more views tbh
Appreciate the support!!
@@CULTTENNIS DO you???
I wouldn't call Federer a "heavy hitting baseliner". Yes he can hit a hard ball, but he is much more about quickness around the court, getting to the net and precision in his shots
Federer is an agressive baseline player. He is more known for making amazing passing shots against opponents who come to the net. When his opponents like roddick comes to the net, he doesn't. He played s&v with Pete and that's just about it.