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Putting It All Together: My Daily Plantar Fasciitis Prevention Routine Tennis Beyond the Headlines: March 31, 2025 A Mother’s Day and Father’s Day Gift Idea A Great Gift for Grads… and Tennis Players Basket Case: The Gift of Tennis for Easter Improve Your Tennis IQ: The off-court workout for on-court skills A Ratings Expiration Edge Case

Who Wore It Better?

When I came across a couple of 80’s era tennis outfits featured in “The 80’s Called: Vintage Elesse Tennis Clothes,” I was wondering if the house of the Umpire Who Gave Birth to me would eventually surrender a picture of me wearing those ensembles from my playing days. I had a lot of time to sift through boxes of old photos last week as Texas endured 3rd world country performance of the power grid amidst winter storms. Fun times.

Pickleball vs Tennis: Cultural Perspectives

The Fiend at Court “Unplugged” series continues to revisit posts made in 2020. This is possibly the longest “Year in Review” in the history of casual blogging. Today this retrospective has reached the inevitable topic of pickleball. If the Fiend at Court goes the same way as the racquet sports industry is trending, there is a dystopian future where this site issues daily content on pickleball. It is my life’s mission to prevent that from happening.

Charging the Net

Since February is Black History Month, I have been focusing on books about African American tennis players. In the previous two weeks, we have discussed Arthur Ashe in “Days of Grace” and Althea Gibson in “The Match.” If you’re going to talk about the history of black players at the highest levels of competitive tennis, Ashe and Althea are the two obvious places to start.

Three New USTA Wheelchair Comments

The recently released 2021 Friend at Court includes three new USTA comments against the ITF Rules of Tennis. Since this site is currently in the middle of exploring the section of that contains the Rules of Wheelchair Tennis, it makes sense to cover these comments now. This requires a little backtracking. All three of the new USTA comments are in the main body of the ITF Rules of Tennis rather than the wheelchair section.

Recycle Those Tennis Balls

The new court surface for the US Open this year got a lot of press, primarily because it was significantly faster than it has been in previous years. “Laykold Court Surface: The Rest of the Story” provided the details of how the new US Open court surface also fulfills environmental sustainability objectives for the USTA. A significant ingredient of the Laykold surface is recycled tennis balls.

Revisiting Donald Dell

Prior to listening to the podcast interview that inspired the post “Donald Dell Fires Shots Across the USTA Bow,” I had never heard of Donald Dell. Alternatively, maybe I had and just didn’t remember. The only reason Dell appeared as a primary topic on this site was courtesy of an interview he gave on Jon Wertheim’s podcast. Dell was critical of how the USTA promotes and develops tennis in the United States. His ideas and opinions resonated with me.

Waking Up in a Tennis Wasteland

I first wrote about the decline of the tennis culture in my hometown in “Life on the Border: Tennis Wastelands.” Wichita Falls used to be a hotbed for tennis, but that simply isn’t the case anymore. While the umpire who gave birth to me continues to recover from the injury she sustained shortly before Thanksgiving, I have been spending a lot of time in my childhood home. For someone who spent 35 years away, the decline in participation is jarring.