An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
There are no rules specific to the control of infectious disease in the 2020 ITF Rules of Tennis. The same can be said for the USTA Friend at Court. That is not a surprise because when both of those publications were released last year, COVID-19 was not yet a major concern. As a result, COVID-19 has the distinction of being the first content on this site that was completely unrelated to the ITF Rules of Tennis.
When I first embarked on the project manifested by the Fiend at Court site, I would have asserted that I have little personal interest in the early history of international and professional tennis. The first appearances of early tennis stars in what was published was in the context of newspaper articles summarizing proposed changes to the ITF Rules of Tennis of their time. I am embarrassed to say, that some names that I did not initially recognize are now turning up repeatedly in the tennis books of their era.
The method of deciding the choice of ends and server was a detail that brought me to a full stop during last year’s march through the ITF Rules of Tennis. I was surprised that a particular method of deciding the choice is codified directly into the rules.
The choice of ends and the choice to be server or receiver in the first game shall be decided by toss before the warm-up starts.
Modern tennis fans might be surprised to learn that providing on court chairs for the players during professional tennis matches is a relatively recent development. The fact that on court chairs were introduced at Wimbledon in 1974 was mentioned as a casual aside in conjunction with a post on some proposed rule changes in 1994. In retrospect, it was worthy of a separate post.
1994 was a profoundly important year for Coco Gauff. It is an odd claim to stake for a player that wasn’t born until 2004. The events that unfolded in Women’s professional tennis in 1994 triggered a cavalcade of commissions and panels to study the long term effects on the lives of girls who played on the professional tennis tour while still in their early teens.
I was sitting at a computer in my local public library when realized that this project had transformed from a casual hobby into borderline obsession. For the first time I was compelled to step up the research beyond materials that I either owned or could access directly on the internet. “Best of Five” set matches for women was the topic that precipitated that transformation.
Every once in awhile someone will point out to me that I have historically railed against the “Fast4” shortened format, while extolling the virtues of UTR tournaments that use a very similar Short Set format. While it looks like an inconsistency on the surface, there is a one word explanation: Context.
As I continue my walk down memory lane of this site’s posts in 2020, I am confronted by the Fiend at Court bag tags. These tags were printed with the relevant rules for how to start a new set following the conclusion of a tie-break game. I designed and ordered the bag tags in anticipation that I would use them as a business card for anyone who showed an interest in this site. I would have anticipated that all of the bag tags would be gone by now.
One of my favorite discoveries from 2020 was the fact that the US Open uses different balls for the men and women’s events. That fact was casually mentioned in this site’s discussion of the manufacture and construction of the tennis ball. In retrospect, that topic is worthy of a post devoted entirely to that fact. Today I am correcting that oversight.
When reviewing posts from 2020, I had two realizations. First, I somehow still do not yet own a set of singles sticks. Second, I missed a subtle detail of the rule in my initial pass through that section. I wrote more than I would have anticipated about the singles sticks last year.