An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
There are provisions interspersed throughout the ITF Rules of Tennis and the USTA Friend at Court for suspending play when demanded by external conditions. In officiated matches, the decision on when to suspend play is at the discretion of the chair umpire or the referee. The rules are somewhat vague in defining the conditions under which a match may be suspended.
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The body is a complex system. Reflecting on aches and pains experienced before and after my recent foot injury has brought me to a new realization. It is highly likely that physical indicators were visible in my court movement and stroke mechanics for some time prior to my current injury. It is possible that artificial intelligence video analysis systems might soon be able to identify biomechanical breakdowns and warn of potential significant injury. I think this could happen within the next decade.
Alexandr Dolgopolov becomes the latest Ukrainian player to take up arms in the defense of Ukraine. Russia and Belarus have been suspended from Davis Cup and Billie Jean Cup competition. “Gold Balls” gets some coverage in the mainstream tennis media.
Using data to drive decision making is a well established organizational best practice. Over the past couple of years the rationale for decisions that the USTA has made to increase adult tournament participation has centered around the mantra that we must follow the data. As an engineer, I naturally gravitate to data-based decision making. However, I am not convinced that we are effectively doing that in tennis at the moment.
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Yesterday I made significant updates to the look and feel of this site. It was the first major structure revision since Fiend At Court was launched on New Year’s Eve in 2019. At that time, I had little experience with WordPress themes and even less of an idea what this blog would eventually turn out to be. Two plus years into this project, I now have a more refined sense of the content and flow. Improvements to the presentation and navigation features on the site were long overdue.
As a senior tennis player, I am always on the lookout for ways to put a little more “pop” in my game. Unfortunately, last weekend I wrong-footed myself trying to recover position from a deep lob and felt a “pop” in my foot and ankle area. It was immediately apparent that I would be retiring from the match. I couldn’t take a step without excruciating pain. I am having an MRI today and will know on Monday the full nature and extent of the injury. (I have a pretty good idea what it is.)
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When I published a summary of all the doubles books reviewed on this site last year, a couple of people asked me how I managed to miss “Doubles Domination: The Best of the Best” by Bob Allcorn. Quite frankly, I didn’t even know that the book existed. In retrospect, the omission is a travesty. It is very good.
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Today I was astonished to discover that I haven’t written directly about a rule that appears in the USTA Friend at Court since November of last year. It is high time we resumed our (apparently no so) steady march through the Rules of Tennis. We are currently in the “Role of Court Officials” section and this week will turn our attention to the line umpire.
A data and analytics research group will soon release a paper that studies momentum swings in tennis. “Live Counter- Factual Analysis in Women’s Tennis Using Automatic Key- Moment Detection” uses machine learning to predict how certain events in a match will play out before they occur. The paper defines some new metrics for tennis that could potentially extend the state of the art of analytic data analysis in tennis.
The crisis in Ukraine continues to dominate the news. Coco Gauff speaks out on gender identity and Rafa Nadal has harsh words for how the ATP handled the Alexander Zverev situation.