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.

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.

Same. I've never even searched for Tennis on UKposts 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

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

@@yorkshirepud5340 That´s not clay... that is regular hard court.

it sounds like what they should have baned was putting salt on a clay court

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.

@@davemiller6055 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.

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

Right. Lmao

Me too

Same

Same

Same

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.

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.

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

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?

That joke seems a little Forced.

Red clay is clearly the High Ground.

you wanna buy some blue clay?!? you dont want to sell me blue clay... i dont wanna sell you blue clay you want to go home and rethink your vanity project

Fuckin genius

that's what she said

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.

...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

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'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.

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

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.

@@JackDesert 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

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.

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

"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

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...

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 UKposts or Google before

Yes, why are you?

Nobody cares about tennis

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

One of the most random recommended videos that I still decided to watch😭😭😭 guess they know more than we credit them for

OGdienomyte850 Haha! UKposts knows me better than I know myself

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Dang right. I don't see why it's a problem, how is it sexist? They are frigging models for crying out loud, it's what they WANT to do. Sure, those other ballkids miss out but on the other hand the models miss out if they don't get the gig!

Your profile pic is perfect for this comment

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😂

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 :)

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

"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.

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

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.

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 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

dank pods

the boybrutus same

The censoring greedy a$$ yootoob thanks you.

@@kellyt5341 How is it censoring and greedy? What

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.

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.

See that's a simple solution large multi-national organizations don't like simple solutions they want things to be as expensive and costly as they can so they can raise ticket prices and licensing rights.

@eyeoftheebeholder00 Probably yes i mean one kind of does lead to the other some point to be fair. XD Meanwhile a normal person is like why don't we just choose a different color ball. They already exist so why don't we use a red ball on the green courts and a green ball on the red clay.

Exactly my thought.

@@jason808094LeCrown Colorblind people be like: U WOT M8?

just like in cricket there are different coloured balls for different conditions and formats

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

Comments like these make my day! :)

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.

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

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?

*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.

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.

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