Grass & Clay = Chalk & Cheese, eh?

Barely a fortnight separates the two, the seeded players too aren’t very different, the continent doesn’t change, yet for some reason the two non-hard court slams have a trend of producing different champions! The change of surface could be the major reason, or the suitability of certain players to certain conditions or simply a coincidence.

Let us scroll down ‘recent history’ to explore this occurrence! Since the year 2000 only thrice has the Wimbledon and French Open had the same men’s single champion - 2008 & 2010 (Nadal), 2009 (Federer). Nadal’s early ouster from this year’s Wimbledon came as a shocker, yet there have been instances of the French Open champion bowing out early at London - Gustavo Kuerten (R3 - 2000), Juan Carlos Ferrero (R4 - 2003), Rafael Nadal (R2 - 2005).

The Women’s draw has produced a common champion only once - 2002 (Serena Williams)! Premature exits at Wimbledon after Paris glory have been a frequent feature in this draw - Mary Pierce (R2 - 2000), Anastasia Myskina (R3 - 2004), Justine Henin-Hardene (R1 - 2005), Ana Ivanovic (R3 - 2008), Svetlana Kuznetsova (R3 - 2009), Francesca Schiavone (R1 - 2010), Li Na (R2 - 2011).

Men’s doubles have seen a common winning pair only once -Todd Woodbridge & Mark Woodforde (2000). The women’s doubles draw too has produced only one such result - Kim Clijsters & Ai Sugiyama (2003). Mixed doubles pairs don’t win many slams too often and not a single pair has won the French Open & Wimbledon in the same year for the last 11 years!

Experts could delineate this pattern in a much more proficient manner, but prime facie it would appear that certain players associate themselves to a certain kind of surface. For instance Nadal has 7 French Open titles to his name, but only 2 Wimbledon Championships! Federer has been in the finals at Paris on 5 occasions but has a poor conversion rate with only one win; contrasting to his stats at Wimbledon - 7 final appearances, 6 titles. Serena has 4 Wimbledon titles in comparison to 1 French Open win. Her elder sister Venus has 5 Wimbledon titles but no French Open titles. Justine Henin had a 4-2 French Open-Wimbledon track record.

All the above cited names have been the leading players of the past decade or so and hence very good representative illustrations to back the thought of preferential surfaces. Having different champions in a space of one month can be wonderful for the sport and its followers for it reiterate the point that sports implies unpredictability! Also it provides the competing players an opportunity to believe that a champion can be beaten if the conditions are different. So does Wimbledon 2012 back the above pattern? Thus far it appears to do so - Nadal has been ousted, the men’s doubles pair of Max Mirnyi & Daniel Nestor has been beaten in the first round and the mixed doubles pair of Bhupathi & Sania have gone out of contention in the second round!