An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Last Friday I described how Brad Gilbert was once ejected by a court official for attempting to coach with hand signals during one of his son’s tournament matches. That story prompted me to take a look at exactly what the Rules in the USTA Friend at Court have to say about the matter. Gilbert did not disclose the year that his ejection occurred, so I will use the current version of the rules as a basis for discussion.
The idea to eliminate service lets in tennis is gaining momentum. There are currently two high profile places where the no let rule can be observed in action. The first of these is World Team Tennis where the no-let rule was implemented to speed up play and create drama. It was also implemented in NCAA men’s tennis where the motivation was to eliminate cheating.
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Alternate scoring methods were covered in great detail during this site’s initial march through the ITF Rules of Tennis in early 2020. However, there are a couple of nuances to the format in one of the appendices that deserve additional attention. I am guessing that both situations are relatively unknown to recreational tennis players.
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A couple of weeks ago I played a practice match on the park courts near my house. Recently someone painted numbers directly on the surface of the court. Unfortunately, whoever did this was obviously not terribly familiar with tennis. The new numbers were placed behind the baseline where tennis players typically position themselves during normal baseline singles tennis play.
The Rules of Tennis Revenues from advertising is an essential part of the tennis ecosystem. It is conventional wisdom that tennis players are likely toRead More
Reilly Opelka was fined $10,000 for carrying a pink bag onto the court before his second round US Open match against Lorezo Musetti. The problem wasn’t the color, but rather a logo which was determined to be too large. Opelka joked about the fine on Twitter on Friday, writing “US Open ticket sales must be strugglin this year.”
There has been a lot of recent attention in the tennis media about the toilet habits of Stefanos Tsitispas. Since I run a (loosely) rules focused blog, people have been asking me for my opinion on the situation. Consequently, it would be fair say that I simply had to go there. (See what I did there?)
One of the most culturally distinctive differences between tennis and other sports is how opponents are expected to cooperatively warm-up with each other prior to competition. It is a really strange practice when you think about it. A couple of week’s ago at the Koser Jewelers Tennis Challenge, Coco Vandeweghe tired to refuse to warm-up when her match resumed following a suspension for extreme heat. When the umpire and her opponent forced her to warm-up anyway, she petulantly refused to expend any effort.
Last Wednesday’s “The Rules of Tennis” post drew a couple of comments that compel me to follow-up. In case you missed it, an umpire called hindrance call against Daniil Medvedev for apologizing to Alexander Bublik during a point in Toronto. This site’s (somewhat) sequential march through the rules of tennis has yet to reach the section of the USTA Friend at Court about talking during a point. Because it is current and relevant, we will jump ahead. It is a case where the written rule diverges significantly from how it is normally carried out in USTA sanctioned matches.
There was an unusual call last week in a match between Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Bublik. Medvedev lost a point for apologizing to Bublik after almost decapitating him with an overhead. Miraculously, Bublik got a racquet on the ball and returned it. The umpire called hindrance on Medvedev for saying “Sorry” when the point was still in play.
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