Few things on this. Aside from the fact that the Laver Cup court (which Fed presumably has some control over?) plays bizarrely slow compared to most of the elite tournaments on the men's tour, you can have a look at the data to see whether his claim that clay, hard, grass courts all play the same. Looking at one of the slower and one of the faster courts:
Adjusted Ace rate Monte Carlo 2025: 5.3%
Ace Rate Cincinnati 2025: 12.3%
Avg Rally length Monte Carlo 2025: 4.75 shots
Avg rally length Cincinnati 2025: 3.58 shots
CPI Monte Carlo: 29
CPI Cincinnati: 43
The ace rate and rally lengths are meaningful differences that hold up across the last few years on different surfaces. Comparing grass to clay, Wimbledon's 10 year adjusted ace rate (approx 12%) is very different to Roland Garros (approx 6%). Surfaces still do create differences, especially because they all take spin quite differently and spin rates are massive right now
Players are also making adjustments from surface to surface and playing differently, you can see that in slice rates, return strategy etc:
I think part of the issue is that the dominant play styles that have emerged in this generation (Alcaraz and Sinner) are genuinely very, very effective on both slow and fast courts. Alcaraz and Sinner are both complete players with few imbalances, but both of their key skills - serve, forehand/backhand 1, and return - are so good in combination and are so sustainable that their optimal strategy is to start blasting as early as possible in the point. They simply don't need quite a lot of the rest of their skillsets that often in order to beat the field
It's obviously true that some courts were slowed after the 90's servefest, probably peaking in slowness in the 2007-2014 period. But multiple courts have also gotten quicker since then and the vast majority of points are over very, very quickly. Long rallies are a small minority at the top of men's tennis on every surface (approx 70% of points are over in the 0-4 shot range). It's far from certain that massively slower courts would produce longer points given how much power the current players have, nor that massively faster courts would produce much shorter points (we're already at a very low avg. rally length on many hard courts), nor more variation (serves and forehand 1's are already hugely dominant, especially on quicker courts, leaving little room for variation of playstyles). You can even argue that it's actually slower courts where we see more variation at the moment, just consider the matchup differences and all court tennis differences (RG final featured a higher net point rate than the US Open final for e.g) between Alcaraz and Sinner at Roland Garros (slow court) this year vs their US Open final (medium fast court)
Also the bit about tournament directors wanting the best players in the finals is fine and has always been true. Shouldn't the biggest tournaments be won by the best players? To a degree you *do* want to decrease variance when determining who the best is in a skill sport. I never understood why this is controversial.
Federer is obviously right that the courts are more similar than they should be. We should have more genuinely quick courts and more genuinely slow courts to at least try to encourage playstyle diversity (Indian Wells is the only medium slow rated court left at the top level of men's tennis in 2025, there are no slow rated hard courts at Masters/Slam level). What we have instead is a bunch of medium fast hard courts from the Australian Open to Miami, to Cincy, to the US Open, to, Paris, to the ATP Finals (which has an avg ace rate of 15% in last 4 years btw). Plus a bunch of inconsistent and occasionally dead balls (although rumours are that some of the ball issues have been, or are being, solved).
As always I think this debate is sort of stuck in 2016 rather than 2025. Court speeds have changed quite a bit in recent years, and so have the dominant playstyles of the leading players (Alcaraz and Sinner). Ignoring both these things makes debate on this nearly impossible
🎙️🇨🇭Roger Federer not a fan of slowed down courts on tour:
"That's why we, the tournament directors, we need to fix it. We need to have not only fast courts, but what we would want to see is Alcraz or Sinner figure it out on lightning fast and then have the same match on super slow and see how that matches up. <> It's because the tournament directors have allowed with the ball speed and the court speed that every week is basically the same. And that's why you can just go from winning, I don't know, French, Wimbledon, US Open, and just play the same way.
📹 Served