An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
I am counting down the days until the release of “All In: An Autobiography” of Billie Jean King which drops on August 17. In the meantime, I am revisiting previously published books on her life. First up is another autobiography, “Billie Jean” that was published in 1974. That work captures the chaos of the early days of the WTA as well as that moment when Billie Jean arrived at the realization that she was much more than “just a tennis player.”
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There are no requirements in the ITF Rules of Tennis regarding Court Pace Ratings and Certification. The ITF programs that provide those measurements and assessment services are in support of court construction, rather than rules conformance. It is understood that there will be a wide range in the speed of various court surfaces. If you have watched a professional match that included a court speed graphic, the odds are very high that it was not the ITF Court Pace Rating at all.
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A dampener is a device placed into the string bed of a tennis racquet that reduces vibration. The dampener simply mutes the effect of hitting the ball. Contrary to marketing claims, there is no dampener that will lessen the symptoms of tennis elbow. Similarly, assertions that using a dampener reduces power have also been debunked. In other words, the use of a dampener makes no material difference when playing tennis. I know all that, yet I can’t play without one. It is maddening.
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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.