An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
In “Life on the Border: Tennis in DFW” I wrote about a practice colloquially known as “double dipping” in league tennis. It is fairly common in the DFW area for players to play league tennis in both Dallas and Fort Worth. Additionally, most local leagues allow players to play on more than one team within a league, as long as those teams are in separate flights or divisions.
A couple of weeks ago a player posted a question to the Facebook group of the active USTA tennis tournament players in Texas. The fundamental question is whether it is fair for a single person to captain multiple teams within the same league that play in the same flight. The hallmark of this site is using these types of situations to dissect and analyze the individual and organizational dynamics involved. This is a terrific case study to examine the rules and incentives in the USTA League framework.
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We are in the middle of a multipart examination on strategies and tactics for competitive tennis play. The first three weeks we have been focused on our own side of the court. All tennis players must have a deep understanding and awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses in order to develop strategies and tactics that work for them. Today we are shifting our attention to the other side of the net.
Last week in “Skipping Forward in the Interest of Continuous Play” we discussed that the time limit between points in the official rules of tennis is 25 seconds. There is a USTA comment on this rule that establishes one pretty significant exception.
If you have ever seen a dude carrying a jar of pickles around at a tennis tournament and wondered what that was all about, there is a two word explanation: Muscle Cramps. Pickle juice is widely regarded as a magical cure for muscle cramping within tennis circles for a very simple reason. It works.
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The USTA has announced a fairly significant restructuring of the membership cost model. This initiative is a recommendation from the “Membership Transition Advisory Group” which studied “best-in-class” membership models to develop a new engagement structure for tennis.
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One of the immutable differences between pickleball and tennis is the size of the court. Four pickleball courts can be constructed in the same space as would generally be allocated to one tennis court. In fact, the “four pack” arrangement of pickleball courts into the same size area as a tennis court is a very good configuration for considering the social dynamics of pickleball.
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Examination of pickleball is unavoidable and inevitable in any serious consideration in growing the game of tennis. Pickleball is regarded as a competitive threat to tennis. At the same time, the explosive growth of the sport is an enticing case study for any sport wishing to replicate the same success.
As far as I can tell, pickleball players do not have jobs. They do not have families. They consume all their meals from ice coolers which they carry up to the courts with them on a regular basis. They never leave.
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In 2019, Rafael Nadal defeated Novak Djokovic to win the men’s singles title at Rome. In the course of doing so, he provided us with a statistic that is probably one of the best examples of how to develop strategies and tactics around a player’s own strengths. The very best players in tennis have a sharp understanding of what they do well. More critically, they are able to develop tactics and techniques that maximize their strengths.