An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The fundamental truth about the choice of ends and service is that the selection really does not matter all that much. Due to the structure of the game, any advantage from playing from either end evens out over the course of a match.
Yesterday we discussed how ITF and the USTA have turned us all into degenerative gamblers via the mandatory casting of lots before each match starts. Today we turn our attention to the spoils of victory. Exactly what happens after the coin toss is executed?
Once upon a time, I gambled away the toss for choice of ends and service to my opponent prior to being assigned a court at a USTA Major Zone tournament. The side bet was on which of two other players in the draw would be the last to arrive for the first round matches. At the time, I considered the act to be brazenly outside of the rules.
Rule 8 of the ITF Rules of Tennis, as printed in the USTA Friend at Court, is titled “Server & Receiver.” This section essentially does nothing other than to define those two terms.
When I was looking for a media source of the events described in the “An Inconvenient Truth” post, I mentioned that a random twitter userRead More
While the rules of tennis are fairly straight forward and compact in the main body, the appendices are extensive, convoluted, and the place where all hell breaks loose such as shortened scoring and other alternative formats. This brings us to the topic of the match tie-break.
I think that I would have skipped on past the nuance that the WTA Age eligibility rules emerged from the insane summer of 1994, butRead More
On March 29 1994, Tennis Australia announced that the finals of the women’s singles the following year would be played best-of-five sets. If history wasRead More
Following the “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973, the debate over gender pay equity in women’s tennis hit a boiling point. A New York TimesRead More
Today I move into a new topic within the USTA Friend at Court. Cue the balloon and confetti drop. I am once again making progressRead More