An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
I have been enjoying a fun diversion of reading about equipment that appears on the ITF Non-Confirming Equipment list. I think I would like to get my hands on some of these items and see if they really produced a material difference in play to the point of threatening the traditional skills required to play the game of tennis.
The ITF is the arbiter of compliance to the Rules of Tennis for racquet and racquet technology. The ITF “Product Conformity” pamphlet for this aspect of the game indicates that the interpretation is performed in a manner that preserves the “traditional character of tennis” as well as the skills traditionally required to play the game. Tennis is a game based largely on tradition.
After railing on the ITF for excessive wordiness in the racquet specifications, I am immediately confronted with a one word answer to a case ruling. Well played, ITF. Well played.
I am relieved to discover that there is nothing specifically in the rules prohibiting one from using the tennis racquet in order to liberate a burger.
An ITF Case ruling indicates that if a player accidentally breaks a string that he can continue to play with the racquet unless doing so was specifically prohibited by event organizers. This begs the obvious question why does it have to be accidentally?
The fact that the Friend at Court actually attempts to constrain the hitting surface of the racquet falls in the “isn’t that cute” department for me.
How the racquet might be a tiny ITF rebellion against one of the stipulations imposed when they assumed stewardship of “The Rules of Tennis.”
Today we come to the first of two places in the Friend at Court where material changes to the ball are covered. May a player cause a ball to become wet by using the ball to wipe perspiration from the player’s body?
Exploring the question of why red seems to be associated with regular duty or clay courts eventually leads to Penn.
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Today I am exploring the possibility that I may have possibly once won a point due to a faulty rules interpretation from a USTA official.
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