An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
In a way, the ITF approved Player Analysis Technology list tells a story about the evolution of technology in tennis. Each report is a tiny time capsule of the current innovative thinking. The two oldest reports that appear on the ITF approved device list are Hawk Eye and something known as a KITRIS KIT.
I am guessing that Nick Taylor is an unfamiliar name to the majority of tennis fans. In fact, I only heard about him when casting about for the appropriate tennis news story to share as this week’s “News You Can Use” feature. Nick Taylor is a former #1 world ranked player in both singles and doubles. Still not ringing a bell? Taylor competes in the Quad Wheelchair division.
Modern tennis fans might be surprised to learn that providing on court chairs for the players during professional tennis matches is a relatively recent development. The fact that on court chairs were introduced at Wimbledon in 1974 was mentioned as a casual aside in conjunction with a post on some proposed rule changes in 1994. In retrospect, it was worthy of a separate post.
1994 was a profoundly important year for Coco Gauff. It is an odd claim to stake for a player that wasn’t born until 2004. The events that unfolded in Women’s professional tennis in 1994 triggered a cavalcade of commissions and panels to study the long term effects on the lives of girls who played on the professional tennis tour while still in their early teens.
I was sitting at a computer in my local public library when realized that this project had transformed from a casual hobby into borderline obsession. For the first time I was compelled to step up the research beyond materials that I either owned or could access directly on the internet. “Best of Five” set matches for women was the topic that precipitated that transformation.
Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played is a book by Jon Wertheim about the 2008 Wimbledon Final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. It would be weird if it were about a match between two other players. While Strokes of Genius is ostensibly about the match, in reality it is a portrait of the rivalry between the Federer and Nadal as it stood at that time.
When this sequential march through the ITF Rules of Tennis was first initiated, I anticipated that discussion of wheelchair tennis might be omitted altogether. However, after the backlash against the USTA for attempting to eliminate the wheelchair tennis from the US Open in 2020, it became a topic that was impossible to ignore.
The ITF publishes a list of approved “Player Analysis Technology” devices on their official web site. Information on each device in that list includes the official report of the evaluation. Sadly, the ITF does not publish the reports for disapproved devices. However, examination of the reports from the devices that were approved reveals the factors that are generally considered.
I have to confess a distinct lack of enthusiasm for today’s topic. This past weekend marked the first tournaments of the year to be executed under the new USTA Play Tennis framework. The largest of the events held was the Level 5 Open 2021 CATA Polar Bear Adult Doubles. That tournament was conducted in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, that tournament was ultimately run under the old TennisLink system.
Every once in awhile someone will point out to me that I have historically railed against the “Fast4” shortened format, while extolling the virtues of UTR tournaments that use a very similar Short Set format. While it looks like an inconsistency on the surface, there is a one word explanation: Context.