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Quadruped Alternating Toe Mobility Stretches Tennis Beyond the Headlines: February 24, 2025 For the Love of Competition Rankings Point-Chasers The Importance of Why Game, Set and Match: Secret Weapons of the World’s Top Tennis Players Checking the Quota Allocation for the NTRP National Championships

A Long Way Baby: Behind the Scenes in Women’s Pro Tennis

On By Teresa Merklin

Our third book installment during Women’s History Month is another professional tennis “Year in the Life” account. Grace Lichtenstein’s offering, A Long Way, Baby: Behind the Scenes in Women’s Pro Tennis, focuses on 1973. It had been a scant three years since the “Original Nine” signed the $1 professional contracts which spawned the tour sponsored by Virginia Slims. Women’s professional tennis was in its formative stages. It was also the year that Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs played their landmark “Battle of the Sexes” exhibition match in the Astrodome.

Reflecting on a Wheelchair Tennis Rule

On By Teresa Merklin

There is a elegant simplicity to the Rules of Wheelchair Tennis. The ITF Rules of Tennis are constructed in a way that makes it clear that everyone plays tennis under the same basic rules. The adaptations of those rules for Wheelchair Tennis players are codified in a separate section that only addresses those modifications. As we have been working through our sequential examination of the Rules of Wheelchair Tennis addendum, each section typically overrides or adapts a rule on the books from the main body of the ITF Rules of Tennis.

Embracing the Evolution of the Tennis Ball

On By Teresa Merklin

Throughout the history of tennis, there has been significant evolution in the construction and manufacture of the tennis ball. It is a good thing, because otherwise the sport would still be played with a ball made of leather stuffed with rags and/or horsehair. I sometimes wax nostalgic about the characteristic aroma of the modern tennis ball. It lingers in the atmosphere at tennis facilities as a permanent vestige of the fleet of the ball carts and hoppers used by the resident teaching pros. I shudder to think what it would smell like if we still used the traditional balls from the earliest days of tennis. I… probably would not store tennis balls in my car if we did.

League Captain Alert: NTRP Computer Ratings Expirations

On By Teresa Merklin

2020 was a year of difficult decisions. One of the myriad of problems the USTA was confronted with last year was what to do with player NTRP ratings. Due to shutdowns and closures due to the pandemic, the volume of matches did not achieve the numbers required to reliably make the NTRP calculation. The USTA statement that announced the decision that ratings would not be updated at the end of 2020 first declared the NTRP system to be fundamentally sound. (Cough.) The move was characterized as a difficult decision. I am sure it was.

Let’s Be Honest: Martina Navratilova

On By Teresa Merklin

Martina Navratilova is the perfect case study of inequities in professional tennis endorsements. It is an undeniable fact that throughout here playing career she did not receive the same level of corporate sponsorship that the other players in her tier of performance were routinely awarded. We have previously touched on two contemporaries of Navratilova, Zina Garrison and Lori McNeil. Those players also did not receive many endorsement opportunities and that fact is attributed to the color of their skin. On the other hand, Navratilova’s issue is that she has always been always open about her sexuality. The tennis industry powers during her career simply did not believe that people would purchase products enforced by bisexual and homosexual athletes.

Talk to the Hand: A Halep of a Red Dress

On By Teresa Merklin

“2018 AO Flashback: Fashion Hits and Misses” published last Sunday focused on the duplicity of the Baseline Tennis columns highlighting fashion “Hits” and “Misses” from The Australian Open in 2018. That year was selected intentionally and it wasn’t because of the garish bright salmon color that was predominate in the Nike line that year. In 2018, Romanian tennis player Simona Halep was the lead photo and story in the “Misses” column. The official Tennis Channel twitter account, a part of the same media conglomerate as Baseline Tennis, even tweeted about Halep as a fashion “miss.”

Ladies of the Court

On By Teresa Merklin

If I had to pick one word to describe Ladies of the Court it would be “lurid.” “Sordid” is a close second selection. Perhaps I should have anticipated that, given that the subtitle is “Grace and Disgrace on the Women’s Tennis Tour.” After reading Ladies of the Court, I really want to believe is that we, as society and a tennis community, have come a long way, baby. Unfortunately, that appropriates the advertising catch phrase of the cigarette brand that financed the early stages of the WTA tour. In Ladies of the Court, the Virginia Slims title sponsorship was unraveling. Spoiler alert: Cigarettes are bad for you. Additionally, as the USTA incessantly reminds us as of late, tennis is a healthy sport. Sponsorship by a tobacco company was incongruous.

Losing Points in Wheelchair Tennis

On By Teresa Merklin

Long time readers of the Fiend at Court may recall that I rejoiced when this steady march through the ITF Rules of Tennis reached the section titled “Player Loses Point.” I am nothing, if not an expert, in the art of losing a point. Now that this project is in the midst of the Rules of Wheelchair Tennis, it comes at no surprise to discover that there are some unique ways in which a wheelchair player can lose a point.