An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
To tie a bow on the Hindrance Section in the ITF Rules of Tennis, I want to share a video that the ITF published on Hindrance. I don’t know exactly when the video was made, but Tennis Australia posted it on YouTube in 2010.
Today we will dispense with the final Case Decision in the Hindrance section of the ITF Rules of Tennis. It is also an excellent case study for discussion on how seemingly arbitrary the hindrance rule can be at times.
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In “Ball Strikes Ball” I confessed that I may have made a rules based error when chastising the umpire I gave birth to for not clearing stray tennis balls off her court during her matches. Specifically, I mentioned that I carried a dog eared copy of the “ITF Rules of Tennis” in my bag as supporting evidence for my assertion that leaving balls on the court would result in a loss of the point.
I have been thinking a lot about what the “new normal” will be when competitive tennis resumes. I am starting to see some tentative plans for flex singles leagues and tournament announcements. Will tournament swag bags contain a mask to wear in the pro-shop and a bottle of hand sanitizer?
My Week 1 progress report of my implementation of Dennis Ralston’s “Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis.” I describe the general process I use to identify and track training activities. Details are also provided on Ralston’s “Davis Cup Workout” along with how it lead me to discover a new muscle in my body that up to this point has apparently just been along for the ride.
As I have progressed through this project I have encountered rules and ITF Case Decisions that seem pretty straight forward at first glance. Sometimes as I start exploring such rules, complexity emerges that was not immediately apparent to me. Today’s ITF Case Decision is one of those instances.
The Hindrance section of the ITF Rules of Tennis as published in the USTA Friend at Court contains 5 Case Decisions. Today we are covering the first two that are just a tad bit inane. When a Case Decision exists, I take it to mean that it a response question or scenario that is escalated to the ITF on a recurring basis. The inclusion of the first two case decision may have arisen from sheer exasperation.
Our exploration of the hindrance rule in the ITF Rules of Tennis continues. Today the focus shifts from hindrance that is within a player’s personal control to things that a player cannot control.
We have spend the past two days covering the first paragraph of the “Hindrance” section of the ITF Rules of Tennis as published by the USTA Friend at Court. Today we will move into the second paragraph of the rule which discussed unintentional acts and things outside the player’s own control.
Today I will continue to dwell on additional audible examples of hindering an opponent. The first is a clip between Maria Sharapova and Maria Kirilenko. I chose this example because it a good example of a non-verbal sound.