413
the evolution of the grass at Wimbledon due to racket technology
(thelemmy.club)
Today's players finish their points from way back
Aren't basically all athletes hugely better than previous generations as well though? Advances in things like nutritional and sport sciences mean it can't just be the racket tech, surely?
Not hugely better, no. Marginally better, yes.
The racquet technology impact in tennis has been enormous, with the largest difference being size and weight. Traditional wood tennis racquets maxed out at around 65 sq in of string area but weighed up to 400 grams (mixed units, I know). A modern graphite tennis racquet can achieve 100 sq in of string area while decreasing the weight to 300 grams!
Lighter weights allow a player to generate a lot more racquet acceleration without killing their wrist. At the same time, the larger string area gives a lot more margin for error when striking the ball. Players in turn responded by changing their swing planes to a higher vertical angle, coming up over the back of the ball to generate a lot of topspin (and string technology helps with this too). The topspin further increases margin for error by making the ball dive down into the court instead of sailing long (see Magnus effect).
All of this has combined to allow tennis players to hit the ball far harder than they had in the past, with the increase far exceeding what you’d expect from physical training alone. Give modern players a traditional wood racquet and they’ll spray the ball all over the place, making huge numbers of errors, until they force themselves to not swing so hard.
Oh to be clear, the "hugely better" aspect I was referring to is the one observable across basically all sports at the top level (not specifically just tennis), particularly the last 40-50 years or so. One easy to observe side effect is how most world records have been set in the past couple of decades, I think the oldest standing one is from the mid-80s.
Though thanks for the extra context around the racquet, it does seem like it's likely the main factor.
This is also largely due to technology. Less about sport-specific technology, and more about technology in general.
The biggest reason why top-level standards in sport have risen over the past few decades in disciplines as diverse as distance running to powerlifting to ski jumping has less to do with improved training for top end athletes, and more to do with the increased standard of living for the world's population. You can't have Kenyans dominating every marathon if they are all starving in famines with no knowledge of the outside world. You can't become a world champion swimmer if there are no swimming pools. And you can't get on the figure skating national team if you have to help with farm chores every morning instead of going to the ice rink to practice. Essentially, we have opened the door to those people who are simply preternaturally good at their sport to become top-end athletes. Someone is simply a genetic freak who was designed to dominate at curling, but they might be living in a rural villiage in Pakistan. Drop an ice rink (that gives out free lunches and plays curling highlight reels on the jumbotron) in that villiage, and Muhammad will soon be the talk of every bar in Canada.
As an average person, advances in sports science are more likely to get you lost in the sauce than push your performance to elite levels. Often, a 20 page training pamphlet from the 1950s is the best training advice someone can get, because it tells them the fundamentals of improving at their sport, rather than getting lost in the minutiae.
The big scientific improvements that have raised the standards in sports are things like:
Everything else was either already known to the athletes of decades past, or else is a marginal performance boost that elite athletes are experimenting with to get an edge on their opponents. Things like supplement stacks, nutrient timing, planning mesocycles, or performance hypnosis techniques are, at best, marginal improvements. They are popular among elite athletes because elite athletes are already maxing out at the fundamentals of their sport and are looking for any edge they can get. And they are popular and talked about among the lay population because it is easier and more interesting than focusing on the fundamentals. Eg, the 37 year old tennis player who wants to improve their game who starts periodizing their tennis training and tracking their macros, rather than simply accepting that they need to make more time in their schedule and widen their social circle so they can play more tennis with people who are just at or above their current skil level.
Afaik this was true a few decades ago too
Yes, like the racquet technology isn’t going to help Joe Sixpack weekend warrior. It takes all that training to be able to fully utilize the technology. The racquet size increase has led to so much more consistency with striking the ball that rallies last way longer now. Longer rallies require way more conditioning to survive!
Yes. The application of scientific rigor to all aspects of sport have produced better human outputs on orders of magnitude and equipment is so much better that it is incomparable to that of a half century ago, across almost all sports — from shoe technology, to golf club design, to skates and sticks, to gloves and even the ball.
Most all sports have seen a revolution in skill and performance level since the 90s. Even is sports like soccer, which is much less dependent on equipment, the change sports science and applied biology have led to in training and recovery cannot be overstated.
yeah it's probably both, and also could be cultural like strategy and technique evolving
And many people who are elite athletes today have been training hard in their sport since they were young children
Ya there are several things that go into this change. Shoes tech, grass type, how short was the grass cut, style of play has changed. If day racket tech is the biggest factor but it's imagine there's more that goes into it.