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NEW YORK – Roger Federer called it "the slowest US Open we've seen in years."
It turns out that it was not an accident.
US Open tournament director David Brewer said Wednesday night that the hard courts of the Grand Slam event had deliberately been "slowed down" in response to players finding in recent years that the surface seemed s & # 39; accelerate.
"In the general comments we received from players over the past two years, several players, both men and women, seemed to have the same thing in common:" Brewer said in an interview. "We just felt that we needed to tackle a little bit this year, and at the same time we wanted to make sure we had a very good consistency across all the courts."
The amount of sand or other granular elements in the top layer of the surface can be adjusted to speed up the process, which explains the change, according to Brewer, rather than the recent move from asphalt to cement under every yard at Flushing Meadows.
Brewer also rejected a theory raised by Jim Courier, a former US player who serves as a commentator for Amazon TV at the US Open.
Courier said Wednesday that US officials thought American players would do better at the US Open if they slowed the pace of the courts, so the surface was changed. Several tennis commentators have ignored Courier's idea, pointing out that the best American men, including John Isner and Sam Querrey, preferred the fast courts and that four Americans had reached the US Open last year. .
Brewer said that he could not remember any concerted effort to change the speeds of the courts with the intention of helping American players to succeed in the Grand Slam tournament.
"I'm just trying to think if we've already sat down and said," Okay, what can we do to benefit American players when it comes to the court? "And I never remember having this conversation in my 20 years here," said Brewer.
No American has won the singles title in New York since Andy Roddick in 2003, and none has reached the semi-finals since Roddick in 2006. The 11th-ranked American Isner lost in the quarter-finals this week .
However, last year, the four US Open semi-finalists were American women, including champion Sloane Stephens. Two of the four women who play Thursday's semi-finals come from the United States – Serena Williams and Madison Keys.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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