An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
Concern continues to mount in the tennis world as it is becoming increasingly apparent that WTA Tennis Star Peng Shuai has not been seen in public since raising allegations of sexual assault against a top official in China’s Communist Party. The WTA has signaled a willingness to walk away from doing business in China.
Most people who compete within the USTA system are blissfully unaware of the sheer magnitude of the USTA and the complex bureaucracy required to operate the organization. While the USTA has a number of full time paid staff positions, the organization is chiefly powered through committees largely of volunteers. Throughout the recent challenges with the new USTA tournament structure and digital platform, it has become apparent to me that a lot of USTA members don’t have even a passing familiarity with the USTA organizational hierarchy and where to lodge their… let’s call it feedback.
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If the request to the impacted tournament community is to continue to be patient, then open and honest information on the actual status and decisions that are being made should be extended to those people.
Tournaments are an essential and vital part of the tennis ecosystem. They are an effective engagement mechanism for both first time and returning players. Tournaments are also a vital outlet for players that have achieved a level of mastery above competitive players in their local area. This post outlines how tournaments are essential for building and sustaining tennis participation across the board.
Alice Marble claimed that she wrote her first book in response to requests from her friends and fans to share her secrets of success. The more likely reality is that the motivation for the effort was rooted in the financial realities of the pre-open era in tennis. Writing books was one way that tennis players could monetize their tennis achievements without jeopardizing their amateur status.
I have a complicated relationship with the Fast4 scoring system. I like it when playing UTR tournaments as the shortened format enables completion of a three match tournament in a single day. I don’t like it for competitions where a significant number of the competitors had to get on a plane to get there. This week how the tiebreak format is handled at the #NextGenATP Finals was added to the mix.
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The Billie Jean King Cup (formerly the Federation Cup) Finals was conducted in Prague a couple of weeks ago. One of the first time innovations was near real-time data analytics provided to each team. The technology was a collaboration between Microsoft, the Billie Jean King Cup Finals, the International Tennis Federation (ITF), and other coaching experts including Billie Jean King herself.
World Team Tennis is underway at Indian Wells but is flying under the radar due to all the Tour Finals events. Tennis Australia announces that the women’s semis will be played in prime time in 2022.
This post is my thought exercise on what a single source rankings table would look like in practice. It turned out to be easier than I expected.
When the NTRP National Championships were unveiled, players in the Texas Section were already well versed and primed for the rankings chase. For players competing for the 8 spots in each division at the Texas Masters, the fact that 3 spots were open for NTRP Nationals simply created a new tier of achievement.
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