An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Heading into New Year’s Eve last year, I shared 12 “Gifts” that people can give themselves to improve the quality of their tennis life. Each of these items is a tennis related life hack shamelessly adapted from a cybersecurity career development webinar that I once delivered. In 2022, I am taking an in-depth look at each one of those items on first Friday of each month. The “Gift” for April is new tennis skills.
There are some intractable features of tennis that put the sport at a significant disadvantage to pickleball for attracting and retaining new players. As discussed in yesterdays post, the pickleball learning curve is less daunting and the sport is physically less demanding than tennis. Additionally, the geometry of pickleball supports better socialization and it takes significantly less time to complete a game. It is no wonder why the growth of pickleball participation threatens to completely overtake tennis.
The April edition of RSi magazine featured an article on how GiGi Fernandez is embracing pickleball. With 17 Grand Slam doubles titles under her belt — combined with notoriety as one of the best tennis coaches for adult doubles — it is a bad omen that Fernandez is adding pickleball to her instructional portfolio.
Racquet Sports Industry (RSi) magazine is one of my favorite tennis news sources. It was previously published as Tennis Industry Magazine and the URL still bears that name. As a sign of the times, the most recent issue of RSi is dominated by news about pickleball, the emergent racquet sport that likely prompted the new moniker. One of the articles this month features tennis great GiGi Fernandez… and her testimony about how much she loves pickleball.
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Using data to drive decision making is a well established organizational best practice. Over the past couple of years the rationale for decisions that the USTA has made to increase adult tournament participation has centered around the mantra that we must follow the data. As an engineer, I naturally gravitate to data-based decision making. However, I am not convinced that we are effectively doing that in tennis at the moment.
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Yesterday I made significant updates to the look and feel of this site. It was the first major structure revision since Fiend At Court was launched on New Year’s Eve in 2019. At that time, I had little experience with WordPress themes and even less of an idea what this blog would eventually turn out to be. Two plus years into this project, I now have a more refined sense of the content and flow. Improvements to the presentation and navigation features on the site were long overdue.
As a senior tennis player, I am always on the lookout for ways to put a little more “pop” in my game. Unfortunately, last weekend I wrong-footed myself trying to recover position from a deep lob and felt a “pop” in my foot and ankle area. It was immediately apparent that I would be retiring from the match. I couldn’t take a step without excruciating pain. I am having an MRI today and will know on Monday the full nature and extent of the injury. (I have a pretty good idea what it is.)
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Last weekend one of my league matches was relocated to an indoor facility after our match was unexpectedly disrupted by rain. As we converged on the pro-shop, one of the players snapped up a pair of shoes in her size from the very depleted inventory. She wasn’t wild on the color, but these are desperate times. Recently I have been wondering if the shoe shortage will result in significant migrations in brand preference once the supply chain issues are resolved.
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I subscribe to Tennis Channel Plus and ESPN+, the two primary paid streaming services for tennis coverage. As a tennis super fan that writes a daily tennis blog, it would only be surprising if that was not the case. Access to great matches that will never be granted a moment of airtime is a clear benefit to me. However, the matches I elect to watch are also a form of tennis activism. It sends a signal to the tennis broadcast companies on what the public might also want to see.
As a lifetime tennis player and fan I have seen a lot of unusual shots. In a league match last Sunday, I successfully played a rare shot myself. For the first time in my life, I hit a winner from the opponents side of the net. In fact it is the only time I have ever been in position to even attempt such a shot. If I didn’t have such poor footwork, it probably wouldn’t have happened.