An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
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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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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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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