An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
There was a controversial ending to a first round match at the Citi Open between Australia’s Jordan Thompson and Elias Ymer, a qualifier from Sweden. The disagreement between the players got so heated that the umpire had to separate them after the match. That is something that you don’t see every day in officiated professional tennis.
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The TheraBand FlexBar is recommended for rehabilitation of tennis elbow. It is also useful for preventative strength training for the wrist and elbow muscles used in striking a tennis ball. The use of a FlexBar for treatment of tennis elbow was first reported in 2009 at the annual meeting of the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine. Unlike a lot of other tennis training devices, there are solid clinical trials behind the marketing claims. If you can get past the fact that it looks like an oversized licorice stick, the FlexBar might be for you.
As both pro circuits heads up to Canada, we consider the sustainability of the tennis ball, tennis camp water fights, and a sudden appearance of beach tennis.
Following her loss to Naomi Osaka in the 2018 US Open Finals, Serena Williams had a lot of soul searching to do. The emotional processing following that match included her own behavior, the code violations, and ultimately the reactions of the fans. In Serena’s own words, “Finally I realized that there was only one way for me to move forward. It was time for me to apologize to the person who deserved it the most.”
Yesterday I described a twitter firestorm that erupted following disclosure that Serena Williams had constructed a Laykold tennis court at her residence prior to the 2020 US Open. Some fans felt that the USTA was providing Serena with an unfair advantage. Others speculated that the organization was trying to make amends for “stealing” the US Open Finals from her in 2018. In the aftermath of that match, the USTA started an initiative to better educate tennis fans on the rules of the sport. Based on that twitter thread, it might not be working.
In 2020 the USTA changed the the court surface used for the US Open from DecoTurf to Laykold. It marked the first time the manufacturer of the surface had changed for the tournament since 1978. As a new surface for that venue, the players really didn’t know what to expect with one exception. Serena Williams had the court at her home in Florida resurfaced with Laykold.
I am counting down the days until the release of “All In: An Autobiography” of Billie Jean King which drops on August 17. In the meantime, I am revisiting previously published books on her life. First up is another autobiography, “Billie Jean” that was published in 1974. That work captures the chaos of the early days of the WTA as well as that moment when Billie Jean arrived at the realization that she was much more than “just a tennis player.”
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There are no requirements in the ITF Rules of Tennis regarding Court Pace Ratings and Certification. The ITF programs that provide those measurements and assessment services are in support of court construction, rather than rules conformance. It is understood that there will be a wide range in the speed of various court surfaces. If you have watched a professional match that included a court speed graphic, the odds are very high that it was not the ITF Court Pace Rating at all.
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A dampener is a device placed into the string bed of a tennis racquet that reduces vibration. The dampener simply mutes the effect of hitting the ball. Contrary to marketing claims, there is no dampener that will lessen the symptoms of tennis elbow. Similarly, assertions that using a dampener reduces power have also been debunked. In other words, the use of a dampener makes no material difference when playing tennis. I know all that, yet I can’t play without one. It is maddening.
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