The rules allowed the players to decide whether to continue with the roof closed or not. It appears from an earlier post that those rules have now been changed, so I guess the roof will now be open if the weather is fine.
Hm, now that they dumped it, you agree it's dumb. Before that, it was just me being partisan, IIRC. Anyway, it'd be interesting to know what @Federberg thinks of the curfew, since he lives right there. Remember that Wimbledon is located in a residential area, the only one of the majors. I guess the problem is the disruption to the neighborhood late at night when a match lets out. Maybe 11pm, at least, is a little early? Or maybe they could put up with it on occasion for two weeks of the year.
I'm not sure how you can say that the grass changing the 2nd week isn't "fair." First of all, a lot depends on the weather, but how do you propose to keep the grass from wearing down over the course of 14 days?
That is completely unfair to me. That match was over and I just said the rule was dumb. You never copped to that until now. Don't tell me what I, for one, may have said had circumstances been different.
It is unfair, because you always assume agenda. I suspect you never really thought about that rule until they rescinded it, only that it was a Nadal fan pointing out that it didn't make good sense, so I must have partisan reasons to say so. Turns out, though, I was just right. Now the point of the curfew is that it's in a residential neighborhood, as I mentioned above, so they're not just being quaint and British. It's the local council that imposed it when they got a roof. There may or may not be much they can do. AO and USO matches have ever gone on to 2-3am. You could see where residents might now want that. And while we're complaining about quitting early, though, RG doesn't even have lights...unless they added them with their new renovation. Now that really is antiquated.
They should switch to the 90’s grass, or find a durable hybrid that ensures that the grass plays as fast as it did in the 90’s. In my opinion, changing the speed of a surface during the tournament short-changes players that are better on that surface. Grass court specialists are cheated in my opinion. I don’t know why some players are not complaining about a surface that changes during the tournament.
That's an interesting point, but it is the local council that has imposed the curfew.
You are arguing 2 different points. That they should change back to faster grass is one, and there are lots who agree with you. The other one is what happens to the grass after it has been chewed up by 7-14 days of play...this is unavoidable, and weather-dependent. Now, maybe if the grass were faster, it would be less distressed by the second week. Even still, you have to understand that grass is a natural surface, and subject to the weather. Even a fast grass, in a hot summer, is going to whither and slow down. The players can't complain about that. If they're going to play on grass, they're going to live with the nature of it.
