An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Today is Kindness Wins Day, which is a celebration of kindness in sports. Today I am sharing one of the greatest acts of sportsmanship in the history of women’s tennis. It is a story about Angela Buxton and Althea Gibson.
The fact that the official rules of tennis are forever in English is a topic that has come up previously on this site. We have finally arrived at the place in the ITF Rules of Tennis which officially and definitively indicates that fact. It comes in a section titled “Amendment to the Rules of Tennis.”
Long time followers of the Fiend at Court will be aware that this site was originally created as an outlet for a daily goal I had established for myself to write a page a day about tennis. At the onset, I was concerned that it might be struggle to come up with enough ideas to fill a page each day. The training wheels phase of this project used a sequential walk through the Rules of Tennis as a daily prompt.
On this final day of 2020, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past year. This site emerged from a goal that I set for myself on New Year’s Eve in 2019. Specifically I wanted to write a page a day about tennis in 2020. The fact that this was done publicly via a blog was an accountability afterthought. Today I am celebrating successful achievement of that goal.
I just took inventory of my “hot list” for future posts and realized that I have more than a 30 days worth of material. That’s a long time to stay off topic. Just as the USTA is re-imagining how that organization can be structured to better serve the tennis community, I find myself thinking through how to structure this effort into a more coherent flow.
When I returned to tennis after my brief 28 year hiatus from competitive play, I had no intention of competing within the NTRP framework. My initial match play was through age-group open tennis. Given my druthers, that is still by far my most preferred mode of play. I realize that I am very much in the minority with that preference.
Yesterday I made the assertion that there seems to be a lot more USTA league players than tournament players. While there is still a lot of territory to explore in this area, what I really want to focus on at the moment is exclusive to tournament play. Specifically, I want to examine the motivation that drives players to play tournaments.
I can’t decide if I am more disappointed or relieved that no one called me out for the “Damn You Autocorrect” item in my training plan indicating that I would watch matches by Chris “Every” in addition to Steffi Graf to study their technique. Probably everyone knew who I meant anyway.
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To pin a thumb tack on this moment in time, I am in the middle of what is shaping up to be a broad and sweeping arc examining the return to organized competitive play following the COVID-19 shutdown. In my home USTA Section, Texas, sanctioned tournaments are allowed to resume July 1.
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In physics, critical mass is the smallest amount of material needed for a chain reaction. The concept of critical mass is a useful analogy for participation in tennis tournaments. Enough players have to enter an event in order for it to be held. Additionally, players typically will not enter tournaments if they assume or are concerned that the draw might not make.