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The Hidden Mathematics of Sport The 2026 USTA’s Friend at Court is Out… and a Foot Fault! The Racquet Bag Leaf Blower: A Small Tennis Tech Upgrade Tennis Beyond the Headlines: March 2, 2026 Beyond the Bell Curve: Why Competitive Tennis Ecosystems Need Edges The Participation Pyramid and the Cost of Lopping Off the Top Winter Is No Longer Coming: The LTA’s County Cup Decision

The Topspin Pro Tennis Training Aid

On By Teresa Merklin

The tennis players that are playing in this year’s Australian Open series recently exited a fourteen day mandatory quarantine period required of everyone who enters Australia. While in isolation, some of the players were allowed to leave the quarantine hotel for a few hours each day under controlled conditions to train and receive treatment. However, many of the players were forced into a “hard” quarantine after others on their chartered flights tested positive for the COVID virus on arrival. Those players were not allowed to leave their rooms at all.

Six Weeks with Dennis Ralston

On By Teresa Merklin

Fiend At Court spent a virtual six weeks with Dennis Ralston in 2020. To be more precise, this site spent six weeks on a structured improvement program inspired and derived from Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis, a book he authored with Barry Tarshis. Unfortunately, Ralston passed away last month following a long battle with cancer. Revisiting the Fiend at Court “Six Weeks” project became compulsory with his passing.

Seconds Pro Interval Timer App

On By Teresa Merklin

In my junior development days, there were basically only two drills that the coaches used for conditioning. The first was to line the kids up on the outside of one of the doubles alleys and have us “run lines” which is essentially just a series of short sprints. The second was running some number of specified laps around the tennis center, or later when I was playing scholastic tennis the adjacent track around the football practice field.

Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis: Week 5

On By Teresa Merklin

I am in the middle of a six week structured improvement program inspired by one of Dennis Ralston’s books, Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis. During this time, I am publishing a status update on the effort every Sunday. This week as I reviewed the inventory of all the training activities that I had devised for myself as a part of this project, I came to the realization that I had not touched on the creation and practice of match routines that would directly lead into better footwork patterns.