Q: What actually changed?
Two things moved at once: the calendar and the courts themselves. The historical split across the ATP season runs roughly 36 hard-court events against 21 on clay and just seven on grass, so hard courts have always dominated the schedule by sheer volume. What changed more is court speed. Governing bodies and tournament directors have spent two decades slowing down hard courts and speeding up clay relative to where they used to sit, narrowing the gap between how a ball behaves on each surface. The ATP itself has acknowledged the trend directly, stating that preserving a real diversity of surfaces and playing styles is something the tour actively wants to protect, which is itself an admission that homogenization has been pulling in the other direction.
