While double checking a local league interpretation of a new rule in 2020, (Executive Summary: The local league was right and the USTA’s war on 5.0 women continues) I came across… The 2020 edition of the Friend at Court.
When I started this project, only the 2019 edition turned upon Google searches, so I assumed that 2020 was not yet out. Even when I google it today, I still get the 2019 edition in my search results, so I wonder if how long the 2020 edition has been sitting there on the USTA website stealthily avoiding detection.
Fortunately, I am not terribly far into this rules of tennis exercise this year, and as it turns out the rules regarding the court dimensions have not changed for 2020. Neither has my new obsession, the singles sticks. This frees me up to switch over to the 2020 edition without going back and revisiting the first twelve posts this year. The crowd goes wild.
According to the forward of the 2020 edition, there is only one substantive change, which is the ITF increasing the maximum time between points from 20 to 25 seconds. I am not exactly sure when the ITF change occurred because I was unable to locate anything other than the 2020 edition of the ITF rules of tennis, which I would note is exactly the opposite of the USTA Friend at Court locating experience.
In a seemingly unrelated statement that will shock anyone who has ever seen me play, I jump rope. Let’s all pause for a moment to let the idea of how much worse my footwork might be if I did not do that, fully sink in. My hands down favorite jump rope training consists of intervals of 35 seconds of jumping, which is purported to be the average length of a point, followed by 25 seconds of rest which we now know corresponds to the maximum time allowed between points. On an implementation note for anyone who wants to create customized interval training, I highly recommend the Seconds Pro app.
The curious thing about the “new” rule change, is that I have been doing the workout described above with the 25 second rest period for at least 2 years. So either I had the rule wrong, which would not be the first time, or the rule is not actually new to the ITF 2020. Maybe it changed on the ATP/WTA tours and the rule book for the rest of us lagged.
In any case, it will be the 2020 edition of the Friend at Court from this point forward.
- United States Tennis Association (2020) Friend at Court. White Plains, NY
