An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Last week the ATP Tour announced some new rules that will be put into effect for the 2022 season. While the Rulebook that reflects those updates has yet to be published, the organization issued a detailed press release outlining the changes.With all the attention and controversy on the bladder capacity of Stefanos Tsitsipas, it comes as no surprise that hard limits on toilet breaks have arrived.
The chair umpire has the right to overrule a line umpire or a net umpire if the chair umpire is sure that a clear mistake has been made.
I have a complicated relationship with the Fast4 scoring system. I like it when playing UTR tournaments as the shortened format enables completion of a three match tournament in a single day. I don’t like it for competitions where a significant number of the competitors had to get on a plane to get there. This week how the tiebreak format is handled at the #NextGenATP Finals was added to the mix.
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The #NexGenATP Finals is a veritable tennis Petri dish. Every year new rules are unveiled at the event to see how they work in practice. The players playing in the event this year profess that they are excited about the innovations. In related news, the young American stars in the same pre-tournament press conference believe that they will contend for Grand Slam titles in the near future. What else are they going to say in either case?
Just as line calling officiating positions have been sharply curtailed with the advent of HawkEye Live, the net umpire position has similarly been a victim of progress in technology. Nets at professional tournaments are equipped with sensors that inform the chair umpire when a service let is detected. When Hawk-Eye live is used, the let signal is fed directly into that system for an audible call.
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Tennis officiating is divided into quite a few sub-disciplines. At an event it is pretty typical have officials on site fulfilling various roles and responsibilities. The tournament referee is responsible for making sure the competition is fair. The referee is also responsible for ensuring the tournament is played under ITF rules of tennis in accordance with USTA Regulations.
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.