An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
This is the penultimate post on the rules of wheelchair tennis. Today we are discussing the fact that if a player is unable to propel the wheelchair via the pushrrim, then it is permissible to use one foot to move the chair around the court. This cannot possibly be more efficient than pushrim propulsion. That is probably why it is generally allowed.
If you can fight through the obvious product placement promotional schtick, some genuinely useful items regularly emerge from the racquet bags of the pros appearing on the Tennis Channel Bag Check series. One of the oldest Bag Check videos featured Marat Safin. In related news, Safin is the answer to the trivia question “Who was the last man to win a Grand Slam Title before Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal started their joint reign of terror?” in professional men’s tennis. You can probably win a bar bet armed with that knowledge.
Timing is everything. Michael Dowse took the reins of the USTA in January of 2020. With all that has happened in the interim, it is kind of easy to lose track of the fact that he had only been in his new position for 70 days before the pandemic became the mother of all complicating factors.
I recently came across an intriguing editorial from Slate originally published in 2005 that focused on the complicated relationship between golf and tennis. It turned up in search results as I fruitlessly looked for comparative participation data between the two sports. I shamelessly reused the headline of that editorial for this post simply for the value as click-bait. While I don’t agree with many of the assertions raised by the author, it is an interesting backdrop for considering the state of tennis today.
I am astonished at how frequently the tennis industry references and recycles participation research data from golf. As an example, the 2020 Tennis Industry Forum meeting included a presentation from the Chief Research Officer of the National Golf Foundation. I have arrived at the conclusion that tennis has a weird obsession with golf.
The news that the Director of Digital Application Development is now “TBD” generated spirited discussion last week in the Texas Section tournament discussion social media circles. There is a lot of frustration, anger, and resentment over how poorly the roll out of the new digital engagement platform for USTA tennis tournaments has gone so far.
The overarching theme for the books this site is covering in April are two men who arguably did more in the advancement of Women’s tennis above all others. It might surprise people to see the name of Bobby Riggs thrown out in that context. I can almost hear the “Wait… what?” In order for the epic “Battle of the Sexes” match to occur, a male opponent was required. A lot of men would not have placed themselves into that position. Riggs was willing to take the risk. Additionally, he worked tirelessly on promoting the match before it occurred. Whether he intended to do so or not, Bobby Riggs and the “Battle of the Sexes Match” put women’s tennis into the spotlight. The result was a massive boost in the public interest in women’s professional tennis.
Since early January of this year, the Fiend at Court has covered the wheelchair section of ITF Rules of Tennis in a segment that runs each Wednesday. That march through the Rules of Wheelchair Tennis has been mostly sequential, though there has been a little jumping around to group related topics for a single post. Today I am covering a couple of topics that are loosely related only in the sense that we have largely already touched on both topics.
Tennis Technology and Training Tuesday The “Ask the Experts” column in the April Edition of Racquet Sports Industry magazine carried a segment on replacing theRead More
don’t want to pile on. Issues with the deployment of the USTA’s new digital application development platform continue to roll in. “Harsh Realities Revealed in the USTA Digital Platform Update” which went live on March 8, detailed some to the issues including the fact that players entering doubles events in USTA tournaments under the new platform have no way to indicate who their partner will be. Issues with the new system continue to roll in.