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Patrick Mouratoglou dismissed Roger Federer's claim that the tournament directors have introduced super-slow courts to tilt the balance in Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz's favor, pointing out that the Serb and his contemporaries also played on slow courts, particularly at Wimbledon in 2002. Mouratoglou said that Alexander Zverev and Ben Shelton's huge serves would make the game boring on fast courts.
Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, the reigning World No.1 and No.2 players on the ATP Tour, have shared most titles between them across all surfaces. However, Roger Federer said that tournament directors have slowed down the surfaces in recent times, making conditions evenly week to week and making it worse for weaker opponents to play, giving the top players an edge.
Federer also said that Sinner and Alcaraz should play on lightning-fast and super-slow courts to see how they adjust to different conditions. Alexander Zverev sided with Federer's claim, expressing his view that the courts seem relatively slower than before.
Patrick Mouratoglou recently acknowledged the remark, saying that tournament directors also slowed down the Wimbledon courts in 2002. Therefore, if the current top two players are not being tested on faster courts, neither were Federer, Nadal, nor Djokovic. He reasoned that the game was getting boring, as many players were serving aces too often.
"It's not new. When Roger was playing, it was already the case. In 2002, Wimbledon decided to really slow down the surface too. It's a decision of all the governing bodies of tennis. Wimbledon was probably the fastest surface historically, and now it became a surface that is sometimes even slower than Roland Garros. We know that what we regret is that it killed service and volley players, but at the same time, it was important because you had guys that were serving too many aces. The game was getting boring in some surfaces... To say that it would be interesting to see Alcaraz and Sinner on a faster surface, yes, it would have been interesting to see Carlos and Jannik non faster surfaces, as it would have been interesting also to see Rafa and Roger and Novak on faster surfaces, which we didn't see either. So it's not a new thing."
Mouratoglou also mentioned that players like Ben Shelton, Alexander Zverev, and Reilly Opelka have big serves. So, to return them would be difficult on fast courts.
"What about the other guys that are huge serves? It would be a completely different game, and I think it would be really boring because how do you return Reilly Opelka? How do you return Zverev? How do you return Shelton? At some point, you won't be able to return those guys anymore, and then the game will be very boring..."
Federer retired from the sport in 2022 after officially playing at the Laver Cup.
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