An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Perhaps it is a sign of the season. As I write this final installment on the “Coaching” section of the ITF Rules of Tennis published in the USTA Friend at Court, I have a Christmas carol stuck in my head. More specifically it is the lyric “He’s making a list, and checking it twice…” from Santa Claus is Coming to Town.
It is a generally accepted practice that players can bring written notes to the court during a match. This is captured in a USTA Comment within the ITF Rules of Tennis published in the Friend at Court.
Some of the case decisions in the ITF Rules of Tennis published in the USTA Friend at Court remind me of conversations with my kids as they desperately searched for loopholes in parental rules and regulations. This was typically an endless barrage of “What if… But what if…”
This week’s Rules of Tennis topic focuses on the exceptions to the “no coaching” rule. Those special cases are codified directly into the ITF Rules of Tennis. Fundamentally, there are two situations when coaching is allowed. The first is during certain team events. The second is if a sanctioning body receives approval from the ITF to allow on-court coaching at specified events.
For the most part, coaching is not allowed during a tennis match. This is one of the things that makes the sport so compelling to me. When two players are engaged in a tennis match, it is up to them to figure out a solution to every problem their opponent throws at them. A tennis player has to figure everything out for themselves when competing. I like that.
2 responses
It seems odd to find the rules for the warm-up in tennis relatively close to the conclusion of the main body of the rules. In the ITF Rules of Tennis, as printed in the USTA Friend at Court, the warm-up period is defined in the very last item in the “Continuous Play” section.
Our steady march through the ITF Rules of Tennis as published in the USTA Friend at Court has arrived at the point where we are entitled to a break. Specifically the break between sets.
Occasionally in senior women’s tennis I have encountered enthusiastic new umpires — apparently very recently removed from their own junior tennis — who want to enforce their ideas of genuine need for a bathroom break. In senior women’s tennis, I generally assume that my opponent isn’t faking it.
1 response
Every Wednesday this site overthinks an excerpt from the ITF Rules of Tennis as published in the USTA Friend at Court. A systemic march through the rules of tennis was one of the founding objectives of this site. Last week the rule regarding recovery of condition was examined. This week we dive into the second sentence of the same rule which deals with medical conditions.
4 responses
I highly recommend tennis as a sport to parents who are looking to raise independent and assertive children. Tennis is the perfect environment for developing and growing problem solving abilities in kids. Due to the unique rules of tennis, players learn to stand up for themselves. It is a valuable life skill.