An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The USTA recently made some enhancements to the League Registration process that should make it easier for new prospective players to find an appropriate team. Those changes are described in “USTA League Registration Improvements.” Today I am providing a guide for helping prospective players decipher the “Captain’s Note” descriptions that are a part of the new system.
Tennis Hits the Books With all the craziness of 2020, Thanksgiving is the perfect time to remember all the things that we have to beRead More
Some of the case decisions in the ITF Rules of Tennis published in the USTA Friend at Court remind me of conversations with my kids as they desperately searched for loopholes in parental rules and regulations. This was typically an endless barrage of “What if… But what if…”
“Fireball.” That was my absolutely favorite comment I received via Facebook after posting “The 2020 Ultimate Stocking Stuffer List for Tennis Players” last Friday. For inexplicable reasons, that comment reminded me of this clip of Vasek Popisil chugging a brown liquid from a bottle during a change over earlier this year. In that case, the substance being consumed was not his “on-court liquor of choice” — which I recently learned is a widespread phenomenon — but rather Maple Syrup.
Last Thursday the USTA sent out an email addressed to all league captains announcing enhancements that should help league captains find and recruit prospective new players. It is a genuinely useful enhancement to the system that is going to help more teams form. At the same time, it illuminates how some local league rules in my area make it unlikely that many captains will actually have the luxury to use all aspects of the tool.
This weekend, the Fiend at Court has been exploring gift ideas for serious tennis players. Friday led off with the “Ultimate Stocking Stuffer List for Tennis Players.” Yesterday’s topic was the “Ultimate Tennis Equipment Gifts for Players.” Today I am wrapping up (see what I did there?) this three part series by writing about Technology gifts. These items are generally non-tennis specific gifts that are perfect in a tennis context.
Finding the perfect gift for a tennis player is a paradox. On the one hand, the equipment and attire required to play tennis are seemingly perfect candidate gifts. At the same time, tennis players are very likely to have very exacting preferences for the equipment that they use. Successfully gifting tennis equipment requires a commitment to finding out those details.
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Tis the season where it seems that every blogger on the planet publishes a list of stocking stuffer recommendations. Some of those lists purport to be targeted directly to tennis players. The vast majority of those lists annoy me for a variety of reasons.
I have been reading Warren F. Kimball’s book The United States Tennis Association: Raising the Game almost all year. It has been an invaluable resource for me as I have explored the purpose and culture of the USTA. This book has frequently been listed in my resources/citations section of my posts. It is a fabulous account of the early history of the USTA and the development of tennis in the United States.
This week’s Rules of Tennis topic focuses on the exceptions to the “no coaching” rule. Those special cases are codified directly into the ITF Rules of Tennis. Fundamentally, there are two situations when coaching is allowed. The first is during certain team events. The second is if a sanctioning body receives approval from the ITF to allow on-court coaching at specified events.