An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Technically the next section up in our steady march through the ITF Rules of Tennis as Published in the USTA Friend at Court is “Role of Court Officials.” That section consists of a single rule which points to the Appendix which contains all the bureaucratic details of court officials. I am going to exercise creative license and defer discussion of that topic until I reach that point in the Appendices.
In March of this year, the USTA announced a new court surface for the US Open and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Since the Cincinnati Open was also played at that facility as a part of the COVID-19 “Double Bubble,” we have already experienced a preview of play on the surface. By all reports, the surface is playing extremely “fast” especially on the outer courts.
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Since I first wrote “Innovate or Die: USTA Adult Tournament Structure in 2021,” pretty much every “Fiend at Court Unplugged” post has examined some aspect of the upcoming changes. Until the USTA publishes something new on this topic, or we start to see events scheduled under the new structure, it is time to move on. Before I do that, I want to create a single page that chronicles what has been written up to this point in time.
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Someday I will tell the story of when I quit tennis forever. Today I want to focus on a tiny part of the story of when I came back to tennis. Specifically, how I slid down the slippery slope into the NTRP system. As previously mentioned in “My Days as an NTRP Sandbagging Bastard” I never had any desire to play NTRP rated tennis.
I keep returning to the point that Anthony Tatu raised recently in the Facebook group of avid Texas Tennis Tournament Players. His assertion was that leagues now have so many formats and variations that players no longer have “free” time to participate in tournaments. It is a valid point. For adults who already play tennis, USTA leagues are the most significant consumer market competition of USTA tournaments.
Starting in 2021, the USTA is dividing NTRP tournament participation into three age tiers: 18 and over, 40 and over, and 55 and over. If you are a regular reader of this site, this will not be news to you. I have been dwelling on the 2021 Adult Tournament changes for an extended period of time. The good news is that I think I am approaching a natural temporary conclusion of this coverage until new information emerges.
I am currently on the process of examining point composition in tennis viewed through the lens of books about tennis tactics and strategy. Last week in part one of this series, I started building the theme that the best tennis players will have the ability to develop strategy and tactics independently of magic playbooks and coaching input.
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Last week I promised that we had concluded coverage of the “Correcting Errors” section of the ITF Rules of Tennis as printed in the USTA Friend at Court. However, in the interim, I observed an umpire failing to change the balls during a match during the Western and Southern Open. This is the first time I have ever witnessed this kind of error in a match. It made me ridiculously happy.
One of the recommendations from the classic tennis book “The Inner Game of Tennis,” is is for the player to imagine that they are observing their own match from an external perspective. It is a valuable technique for alleviating tension and stress while a match is in progress. It is also a valuable perspective to take for understanding what is happening strategically and tactically during the course of a match.
There were two Adult Major Zone Tennis Tournaments in Texas over the last weekend. One was the Polo Tennis Club Adult Major Zone which was located in Austin. The other was the Texas Tennis Museum & Hall of Fame Adult Doubles Major Zone in Waco. It is weird to have two Adult Major Zone tournaments scheduled on top of each other.