South Korea didn’t just slow the court down. They studied the two men who’d be standing on it.
“They have resurfaced the court with a lot of thought and intelligence where they have actually tried to counter both our players,” India captain Rohit Rajpal told PTI after a training session in Seoul. “Sumit likes the balls to bounce because he rolls a lot. But the balls are not bouncing. They have slowed it down because DK also does not like slow courts. He has a huge serve. So they countered it again with this thing.”
There is something almost personal in that, a hard court engineered not against a strategy but against two specific bodies, two specific habits. Dhakshineswar Suresh and Sumit Nagal will spend this tie fighting a surface built with them in mind.