I loved this tweet (and accompanying image) from Massimo on Twitter explaining the evolution of Tennis’ gameplay by looking at the grass wear at Wimbledon over the years.
For context, Wimbledon is a tournament played on grass—not artificial, but real grass. And over the course of the tournament the grass wears down.
In the 70s and 80s the players used wooden rackets, which were much heavier than the carbon fibre and graphite rackets of today. This made it hard to win points from the baseline, so players often won points by playing close to the net. However, in the photos from the 2000s you can see how there is very little wear near the net, with the majority of points now being won from the back of the court.
I love how someone took these photos of Wimbledon over the years and connected it to gear and gameplay evolution. Super interesting!