Second Serve | The Clay Road

From Monte Carlo to Paris, a winding road of sweat, style, and soul. Welcome to the season where tennis becomes art—and nothing comes easy

There is a stretch of calendar time—April through early June—that, to me, resembles less a tennis season and more a painter’s pilgrimage. A winding road through Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Rome, and finally Paris—cities so drenched in history and style that even the ball kids dress like they’re heading to Cannes, not Court Three (see the great article by Racquet Racket). The European clay swing is the Tour de France of tennis: scenic, grueling, and inevitably dust-covered. 

Clay, with its red-streaked clothes and bruised socks, is the surface that dares to ask: Do you have the patience for greatness? It’s not a surface for the impulsive or the flashy. It is the medium of suffering and endurance. Of beauty carved out of attrition. It’s no coincidence that I fell in love with tennis here—Roland Garros, a decade ago, where each rally feels like a novella and each match a Russian epic. I still remember Wawrinka–Murray in 2017—five and a half hours of emotional chiaroscuro and defiant brushstrokes. If they’d held it in the Louvre, the tourists might’ve finally looked up from the Mona Lisa. No sport teaches you more about the psychology of delayed gratification than clay-court tennis.

Hard courts reward aggression. Grass courts favour instinct. But clay? Clay rewards resolve. Sliding into a forehand on the red dirt is not unlike mixing pigment on a palette. Every shot leaves a mark. You don’t so much play on clay as etch yourself into it.

Carlos Alcaraz is clay’s new prodigy—already painting like late-period Picasso, unburdened by convention and gleefully chaotic. All invention and instinct, bold and often a little mad—in the best sense—he layers drop shots, tweeners, and tomahawk smashes across the canvas. Even five-hour matches feel like improvisational sketches: unpredictable, entirely his own—and unforgettable.

Nadal, of course, was Caravaggio—dark, powerful, elemental. His Roland Garros matches were spiritual exercises, every point an act of penance and strength. The clay obeyed him. But no more. Now it mourns.

Enter Sinner, the Da Vinci of this cohort—his strokes are anatomical studies, engineered elegance. Clay remains his most elusive muse—a surface that blunts his precision with messiness. But then again—Leonardo sketched flight centuries before anyone flew. So who’s to say Sinner won’t yet master this gritty realm? He’s definitely got the temperament for it—he once showed more visible frustration over a lukewarm plate of pasta than a five-set loss.

Andrey Rublev remains the clay contender no one quite remembers to fear—until it’s too late. His game is all fire and fury, a barrage of forehands that seem less hit than hurled. Every shot comes with a “BWEH!” and the promise of emotional detonation. On clay, he’s not so much sculpting points as scorching them—but sometimes, that’s exactly what works.

Then there’s Djokovic, still carving lines at 37 like an old master brushing in his final triptych. His clay-court game lacks the radiance of youth, but not the cunning. He’s no longer painting in oils—he’s working in ink and memory. If his body holds, he might yet sketch one more masterpiece in Paris. And if it doesn’t, he’ll still give you three hours of psychological theatre worthy of a standing ovation.

Let’s not forget João Fonseca, still just 18. He moves like a dancer at Carnaval, each slide across the clay a choreographed swirl of rhythm and riotous colour—Tarsila do Amaral’s Abaporu brought to life with topspin and teenage bravado.

Every year I try not to romanticise this season too much. Every year I fail. Spectacularly. Because clay doesn’t just test your shots—it tests your soul. It makes cowards of the powerful and poets of the patient.

And when we reach Paris—where I live—that final stop won’t be just a Slam. It will be the crescendo of something ancient and essential. A reminder that tennis, at its best, is not about domination or data or winners per set. It’s about how long you’re willing to stand in the arena, your shoes full of earth, trading blows under a bruised Parisian sky, for a chance to carve your name in the clay.

And that, mon ami, is where the art begins. Bring your brushes—and fresh socks. Let’s start the clay season.

Who’s your clay-court artist this season?