An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
I am going to start this post with a provocative statement. Whoever came up with the USTA Adult Tournament Ranking System does not understand how tournament rankings should work. Period. I am astonished that these errors ever existed in the first place. It is profoundly disappointing that attempts to highlight these issues have gone unaccepted and unacknowledged.
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I have previously written a lot about the the USTA NTRP National Championships as well as the shortened scoring format used at that event. Today’s post is an executive summary specifically written to bring Senior competitors up to speed on this (relatively) new USTA initiative. I am an active Senior age group Level 1 tournament player who has also participated in the NTRP National Championship tournament. I don’t think there are a large number of people that have competed in both event types.
The April “12 Gifts” challenge is to add a new tennis skill to your personal arsenal. When this topic came up in the rotation my initial reaction was that I would be challenged to participate. On-court high-impact activities are simply not in the cards for me at the moment. However, while the wording of the April “gift” is to add new shots to the arsenal, I do think that there are classic skills that a player can develop to improve their competitive level without setting foot on a tennis court.
The April 12 Gifts “Challenge” is to select one shot to add (or enhance) in your tennis arsenal. Today’s post is a primer on sources of ideas and information that can guide that selection. If you are struggling to identify your top tennis improvement priority, this post is for you.
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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.