So do groundskeepers, who realize that not much can be done to improve a court’s appearance by this stage of the tournament. As long as players prefer slugging out points with ground strokes, the baseline will remain the most heavily trafficked area of the court.

Asked why his forehand started working better in the third set of his loss to Andy Murray on Friday, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said: “When you have the ball above the net height on grass, it’s easier to play, and when the ball comes at you more slowly, it’s easier to play. But when a guy hits hard and deep, I think you have to have been out there playing to understand, but it’s hard to really hit the ball.

“You can’t really hit on grass. There are lots of bad bounces, so when the guy plays deep into the spot where the grass has been worn down and he doesn’t leave you the time to play, you don’t have time to play fast yourself.”

The best that groundskeepers can do is patrol those bare areas with a high-powered vacuum called a Billy Goat, which slurps up lingering dust and debris.

Mark Ferguson is one of three members of the Sports Turf Research Institute’s on-site team, which monitors the performance and the playing quality of the courts. The wear and tear sustained at Wimbledon in two weeks, he said, was not unlike what a soccer field experiences — over a full season.