An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The 2020 Olympic tennis tournament didn’t turn out the way that most people expected. In recent history, the Olympic draws have been littered with breakout performances and unexpected results. As the tennis comes to a close at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a sea of news articles and columns on stunning upsets in the draws is unleashed once again. It is only surprising that people are surprised.
Tennis was restored as an Olympic Medal Sport in 1988. The very fact that the word is “restored” rather than “added” reveals that tennis was a part of the Olympics in the past. That leads to the very obvious question of why tennis was excluded from the Olympic games in the first place.
With the medal rounds underway for Olympic tennis, and the games nearing a close you might be wondering exactly how much a Gold Medal is worth. Winning a gold medal is priceless of course, but the object itself has value. Additionally, many national Olympic committees pay their athletes a bonus for winning a medal. If Olympic glory is viewed as a purely financial transaction however, it is completely understandable why so many tennis players would elect to skip the event.
Pam Shriver’s book is a “Year in the Life” account based on her personal diary from 1985. While technically categorized as an autobiography, it is more accurately regarded as a snapshot of one year presented in sharp relief. Many of the details recorded in the book are not significant in the overall arc of Shriver’s life story. However, every day is a fascinating account of what professional tennis life was like in the mid-1980’s.
The ITF Science & Technical Department has two programs that assist in the tennis court construction process. The Court Pace program classifies the category of the speed of the court material. The Court Recognition program is to quantify the quality of installation.
A recent Wall Street Journal column recommended a tennis swing training device for developing a smooth service motion. Of all the gadgets recommended in that piece, the most clearly useful item is a tennis service swing trainer. The commercial version of the device is made of molded rubber into the form of a racquet handle connected to three tennis ball sized lumps via a cord. A correct serving motion keeps the tennis “balls” in continuous motion.
Tennis news this week largely centered on action from the Olympics and Novak Djokovic’s quest for the Golden Slam.
The Tokyo Olympics is the perfect illustration of one of the challenges that tennis has attracting television viewership in the United States. The daily order of play starts at 10pm ET and concludes about the time that most Americans are rolling out of bed the next morning. Casual fans aren’t likely to stumble across tennis matches during that hour. It’s a tough watch for even hard core tennis fans such as myself.
The Tokyo Olympic Tennis competition got underway yesterday evening and ran overnight. With the timezone differential, Olympic tennis will be played from 10pm through 6am Eastern Time during the early rounds. That is basically overnight, for the continental United States. Additionally, tennis matches will not be broadcast on the Tennis Channel as was the practice with previous Olympic competitions. The primary station in the United States will be the Olympics Channel.
As dominant as the United States women are in professional tennis at the moment, there is one country that is arguably just as strong: The Czech Republic. The small country currently boasts five players in the top 50 in the WTA singles rankings. Additionally, with six of the top 50 WTA doubles players including three in the top 10, the tiny country is a usually a prohibitive favorite to carry the Fed Cup doubles tie.