The Finnish team’s Davis Cup qualifiers start in Turku on the 2nd-3rd. February, when Finland meets Portugal. will show all the Davis Cup 2024 matches of the Finnish team on its channels.
In sports, we often talk about home field advantage. In tennis, especially in Davis Cup, the court has a very tangible effect.
The tournament includes a strong tactical element, as the home team gets to choose which platform to play on. The decision is primarily influenced by the strengths of the own players, but possibly also the weaknesses of the opponent.
The platform has a huge effect on the behavior of the ball. With mass, the ball bounces slower and higher than on hard courts, where the bounce of the ball is fast and low. Grass courts are generally the fastest, but they are rarely played on.
Mass courts favor players who produce a strong spin on the ball with their shots. Hard courts, on the other hand, favor players who serve and hit hard.
The players of the Finnish Davis Cup team belong to the latter category.
Here in the north, tennis is mainly played on hard indoor courts due to the weather conditions. Western Europe and South America have traditionally had better entertainment in mass fields.
Tennis courts are roughly divided into three different speed categories: slow, medium and fast.
In professional circles, speed is measured with an accuracy of 50 units, where 50 is the fastest. There are rarely official readings available to the public about the speeds of the fields.
Captain of the Finnish Davis Cup team Jarkko Nieminen according to the pitch used against Portugal, the speed index is 41. It was built like that for last year’s match against Argentina.
The Argentinians found themselves in their discomfort zone on a low-bouncing platform, and Finland historically progressed to the top 16 of the Davis Cup.
– I felt then that we benefit from the platform relatively more than our opponents. Our players get to play more with their own strengths when there is such a forward low bounce.
Even though the course is fast, Nieminen had originally envisioned an even faster platform. The captain’s wish was that the speed index would have been 43–44.
– However, we got pretty close. The Argentina match went great, and we wanted to keep exactly the same field now against Portugal.
The 396-piece puzzle waited a year in storage
The field used by Finland consists of 396 pieces of plywood. It is manufactured by a Danish company. There are several layers of paint on the surface of the field. The speed of the platform is adjusted by adding sand to the paint. As the goal surface passes, the field speeds up.
After the Argentina match, it was stored in Germany for a year, and for this week it was shipped to Turku.
The court is not owned by the Finnish Tennis Federation, but Finland has committed to renting it for a certain number of matches. Managing director Teemu Purhon according to the agreement, the association pays a weekly rent of 20,000–30,000 euros for the field.
Against Portugal, the platform may not offer quite the same advantage as against Argentina.
Portugal’s number one player Nuno Borges advanced all the way to the fourth round in the hard-court Australian Open, which ended last week, and rose in the rankings Emil Ruusuvuoren over to 47th place.
In Australia, Borges brought down, among other things, the one who was in a strong mood Grigor Dimitrovwhich is the 13th in the ranking.
– The Portuguese certainly play well on this platform, but if we were on the away court, I think the opponent would have chosen a slower platform with a higher bounce, Nieminen thinks.
In addition to the platform, Nieminen believes that Finland will benefit above all from playing in front of the home crowd. More than 13,000 tickets have already been sold to the Turku arena for the two-day event – 6,100 for Friday and 7,200 for Saturday.
So the audience records will be set handsomely. The previous audience record for the national tennis teams is from February of last year, when there were 9,500 spectators during the two-day match against Argentina in Espoo. At the same time, the team recorded its daily record of 5,200 spectators.
Finland meets Portugal in the tennis Davis Cup. shows the matches on TV2 and Areena. Friday’s first match starts at 17:30. On Saturday, the broadcast starts on Areena at 15:00 and on TV2 at 15:20.