An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
A couple of months ago there was a spirited thread on the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) discussion board regarding consolation brackets at National Cat/Level 1 tennis tournaments. Some of the viewpoints and experiences expressed in that forum illuminated the feedback that most likely will influence back draw implementation once competitive play results at that level.
There are no rules specific to the control of infectious disease in the 2020 ITF Rules of Tennis. The same can be said for the USTA Friend at Court. That is not a surprise because when both of those publications were released last year, COVID-19 was not yet a major concern. As a result, COVID-19 has the distinction of being the first content on this site that was completely unrelated to the ITF Rules of Tennis.
When I first embarked on the project manifested by the Fiend at Court site, I would have asserted that I have little personal interest in the early history of international and professional tennis. The first appearances of early tennis stars in what was published was in the context of newspaper articles summarizing proposed changes to the ITF Rules of Tennis of their time. I am embarrassed to say, that some names that I did not initially recognize are now turning up repeatedly in the tennis books of their era.
The method of deciding the choice of ends and server was a detail that brought me to a full stop during last year’s march through the ITF Rules of Tennis. I was surprised that a particular method of deciding the choice is codified directly into the rules.
The choice of ends and the choice to be server or receiver in the first game shall be decided by toss before the warm-up starts.
I am suddenly obsessed with literary and media claims of “The Greatest” tennis matches. It was a natural next step as my examination of Strokes of Genius concluded. Strokes of Genius was published in 2009 with the phrase in the subtitle “The Greatest Match Ever Played.” By sheer coincidence, a second book was also published in the same year with a similar phrase in the subtitle. Consequently, “A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played” is the next book which will be tackled by this site. It is the most natural progression.
My friend Michael always extolled the virtues of the adaptive rules of tennis for wheelchair players. Since his death in a car accident a few years ago I am frequently reminded of the gap he left in so many lives. It is almost trivial to lament the fact that I don’t have him as a resource to consult as I dive into the rules of Wheelchair tennis.
In a way, the ITF approved Player Analysis Technology list tells a story about the evolution of technology in tennis. Each report is a tiny time capsule of the current innovative thinking. The two oldest reports that appear on the ITF approved device list are Hawk Eye and something known as a KITRIS KIT.
I am guessing that Nick Taylor is an unfamiliar name to the majority of tennis fans. In fact, I only heard about him when casting about for the appropriate tennis news story to share as this week’s “News You Can Use” feature. Nick Taylor is a former #1 world ranked player in both singles and doubles. Still not ringing a bell? Taylor competes in the Quad Wheelchair division.
Modern tennis fans might be surprised to learn that providing on court chairs for the players during professional tennis matches is a relatively recent development. The fact that on court chairs were introduced at Wimbledon in 1974 was mentioned as a casual aside in conjunction with a post on some proposed rule changes in 1994. In retrospect, it was worthy of a separate post.
1994 was a profoundly important year for Coco Gauff. It is an odd claim to stake for a player that wasn’t born until 2004. The events that unfolded in Women’s professional tennis in 1994 triggered a cavalcade of commissions and panels to study the long term effects on the lives of girls who played on the professional tennis tour while still in their early teens.