An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The ITF Science & Technical Department has two programs that assist in the tennis court construction process. The Court Pace program classifies the category of the speed of the court material. The Court Recognition program is to quantify the quality of installation.
The section on Classification of Court Pace is found in Appendix I of the ‘ITF Rules of Tennis’ which is published as a part of the USTA ‘Friend at Court.’ It provides some basic information and references out to the ITF technical manual that provides excruciating details of the test procedures. Today’s post narrowly focuses on what is contained in the actual tennis rules. It is interesting but largely irrelevant to actual match play.
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Last Saturday was a banner day of watching tennis on TV. With a temporary lull in USTA League play, and a flare up of plantar fasciitis dictating lower impact activities, I spent the day watching the Ladies Singles and Doubles finals at Wimbledon. There were a couple of moments in both matches that caught my attention.
A first round match at Wimbledon last week between Daniil Medvedev and Jan-Lennard Struff provided a textbook example of the permanent fixture rule in tennis. It also illustrated why Reddit might not be the best source to turn to for official tennis rules interpretation.
There are specifications for ball durability codified in the ITF Rules of Tennis. The durability requirements are provided in an unnumbered table in Appendix I. There are conformance parameters for mass, rebound, forward deformation, and return deformation. The durability testing performed by the ITF uses laboratory equipment that simulates nine games of play.
Each Wednesday this site examines, dissects, and generally overthinks the rules of tennis. Currently we are examining the specifications for the different types of balls that are approved by the ITF for sanctioned competition. Last week I stumbled across an article on the USTA Colorado website that provided a tidbit of information that had eluded me in previous analysis. Pressureless tennis balls are recommended for play at high altitude. In fact, pressureless balls have previously been used by ATP tournaments played in Mexico City. I was astonished to learn that fact.
As we were exploring the four types of balls approved for sanctioned tennis competition last week, I stumbled across a YouTube video containing screen shots from the 2012 version of the “ITF Guide to Products and Test Methods.” One of the pages depicted in that video illustrated notional bounce paths for three of the four types of approved tennis balls. That image also contained a note that the Type 3 tennis ball is also permitted and recommended for play at High Altitude. It is a complete mystery why the ITF would make that recommendation.
Type 1 and Type 3 tennis balls were officially codified in 2002. Approval for the new ball types actually came at the 2001 ITF annual meeting which was held in Cancun, Mexico. From this I came to the obvious conclusion that tequila was heavily involved in the decision. Currently there are exactly two ITF approved Type 1 balls and zero Type 3 balls.
You can probably win a bar bet armed with the knowledge of how many types of tennis balls are approved for adult sanctioned play by the ITF. The correct answer is 4: Type 1 (Fast), Type 2 (Medium), Type 3 (Slow), and High Altitude. Appendix I of the ITF Rules of Tennis contains a table with the conformance requirements for weight, size, rebound, and deformation for each ball type. Today we are focusing on the conformance requirement for “colour.”
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The specification for the tennis ball are codified in Appendix I of the ITF Rules of Tennis. It is probably way more detail and information than most players need or care to know. What I first took to be a subtle anachronism describing the construction of the tennis ball led me to the stunning realization that the sport we call tennis is not real tennis. Additionally, we don’t play tennis with real tennis balls.