An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Alternate scoring methods were covered in great detail during this site’s initial march through the ITF Rules of Tennis in early 2020. However, there are a couple of nuances to the format in one of the appendices that deserve additional attention. I am guessing that both situations are relatively unknown to recreational tennis players.
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The tennis ball machine is a powerful tool for fine tuning stroke mechanics and building consistency. Effective ball machine use starts with the identification of the purpose for each drill. In the absence of that, machine sessions can regress into simply standing flat-footed while playing easy balls from the center of the court. There is an art to getting the machine settings “just right.” However, the real skill is identifying an objective and coming up with an appropriate pattern to work on it.
The BNP Paribas Open kicks off this week and is the only tournament in the main ATP and WTA calendars. Proof of vaccination is required for all attendees, which means that children 12 and under will not be permitted to attend.
In a column following the Laver Cup this year, Tennis Analyst Jon Wertheim observed that in this age if polarization, most fans consider the the exhibition to be either flawless or worthless with no middle ground. For the sake of transparency, I am firmly in the “worthless” camp, as evidenced by my pejorative use of the word “exhibition” when characterizing the event. I have always seen The Laver Cup as a big money grab to cash in on the appeal of Federer and Nadal while they are still playing. Tennis needs to be building future stars rather than clinging desperately to the waning glory days of the most marketable male players in the history of the sport.
During the US Open this year, I received numerous daily emails from the USTA reminding me to tune into the broadcast of the tournament. Other messaging that hit my inbox promoted purchase of tickets for the event. There were also frequent reminders to engage with the “virtual grounds” of Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. The messaging repeatedly hawked US Open merchandise. Following the conclusion of the tournament, I received notifications from the USTA inviting me to participate in an auction of the art that was displayed on the tournament grounds this year. It was a lot of direct email marketing.
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Tennis tournaments are played with an “official” ball and there is a 1 in 4 chance that neighboring courts receive identical balls.
Team tennis is a recurring theme in recent interviews with Billie Jean King as she promotes her latest autobiography, “All In.” To this day, she believes that team tennis is a promising format that can ultimately draw new fans to the sport. In Billie Jean King’s vision, tennis is best when women and men compete together.
A couple of weeks ago I played a practice match on the park courts near my house. Recently someone painted numbers directly on the surface of the court. Unfortunately, whoever did this was obviously not terribly familiar with tennis. The new numbers were placed behind the baseline where tennis players typically position themselves during normal baseline singles tennis play.
The cardio fitness stations that I stumbled across last month at a DFW area tennis court continues to provide fodder for the “Tennis Technology and Training Tuesday” coverage. Last week I started in on “Squats” and assumed that the direction was simply to perform body weight squats. However, in the interim it has occurred to me that for a cardio workout the intended squat variation might have been “Jump Squats” which are also great for tennis.
The Laver Cup sideshow was more interesting than the main event, some early rumors on Australian Open travel protocols, and one sick tweener.