As elite athletes batter a ball back and forth at Wimbledon, if you pan down, and zoom way way in, you’ll see millions of tiny plants are getting battered as well. But such is their lot. Tennis shoes trample the grass courts as players serve, volley and stroke their way to each point. And the vegetation, so carefully cultivated by dozens of keepers for the year prior to the tournament, serves its ultimate purpose by being crushed in the course of athletic triumph.

The grass courts at Wimbledon are grown from 10 metric tons of seed each year, with renovations beginning in September. As June nears, the grass is mowed to an exact 8mm high, which Wimbledon says is the ideal for both play and its survival. The short grass can be a slippery surface for players who slide and skid as they chase down balls, amplified by only being allowed to wear flat rubber shoes that will minimize damage to the grass.

The various court surfaces in tennis caused different styles of play to emerge as most effective over the years, with patient, defensive play from the baseline achieving success on clay, and the aggressive serve and volley technique dominating on grass.

“Grass is extremely tricky because depending on how you hit the ball, not only how hard, but with what spin, you can make [the ball] essentially slide and almost be unreturnable,” said Caitlin Thompson, co-founder of Racquet Magazine, a publication covering tennis culture.

Until 1974, the only Grand Slam tournament played on a surface other than grass was the French Open, and now Wimbledon is the lone remaining grass Grand Slam.

While the type of ball and temperature will affect the speed of play, grass courts are recognized as the fastest of the three main tennis surfaces. The slick grass allows the ball to slide and skid as it makes contact, giving a lower bounce and retaining more speed.

“Not only is the court fast in the sense that you don't have a lot of time to react to the ball,” Thomson said. “Instead of bouncing up for you to hit it back, it's sliding towards you.”

Clay, which has a looser surface, offers more friction for the ball as it strikes, which causes a higher bounce, effectively slowing the ball down. Hard courts are the goldilocks of the trio, and give a more neutral bounce and average speed.

The grass courts at Wimbledon were grown from a mixture of two grasses up until 2001, then shifted to only ryegrass, which allows the ground underneath to stay dry and firm. It also provides a more durable grass in response to competition growing more intense and athletic through the latter half of the 20th century.

Wimbledon has said there has been no intention this year or in previous years to produce slower courts. But the head groundskeeper responsible for the decision, Eddie Seward, recognized in an interview with the New York Times in 2010 that the change made for a relatively higher bounce and effectively slowed the ball down by a fraction of a second.

As these new courts took root at Wimbledon, several other changes that had been slowly shifting the look and feel of tennis overall became evident – perhaps most visibly on the grass courts of Wimbledon.

The advances in racquets and the ability to more effectively return serves somewhat muted the speed of the grass courts. The racquets in combination with progress in overall player conditioning and ability has pushed Wimbledon towards a longer, grinding baseline style of play and blunted the popularity of serve and volley mastered by the likes of former champions John McEnroe and Pete Sampras.

"The sweet spot [of the racquet] goes from the size of a softball to the entirety of the string bed pattern which is almost like the size of a small pizza. Because of that you can extend the rallies longer — you don't have mis-hits — it favors a returner and a groundstroker more than it favors a serve and volleyer," Thompson said.

The grass court tennis season in the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour is a brief plateau through the summer months, with the highlight being Wimbledon. The last tournament before grass season starts is the pinnacle of clay court tennis: the French Open.

The two tournaments have traditionally required vastly different styles of play due to their surfaces being at opposite ends of the court speed spectrum, making winning both of them in the same year a particular challenge for any player.

“Typically grass rewards risky bold play where the other surfaces don't as much, and so a lot of these players are optimized to play on the majority of surfaces which is never what grass is,” said Thompson.

Serbian player Novak Djokovic, an aggressive baseliner, recently won his 23rd Grand Slam Title with his victory at the French Open. He has won Wimbledon seven times – only one title behind the all time men’s leader Roger Federer, who started his career as a classic serve and volley player.

“[Djokovic] is a great example of somebody whose game style isn't really optimized for grass but the fact that he can win Wimbledon pretty convincingly now, year on year, is I think a testament to the fact that the game has just changed in a way that the sport hasn't necessarily kept up with,” said Thompson.

Djokovic is currently the favorite to win Wimbledon according to Draftkings Sportsbook.