An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
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.
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.
Before Arthur Ashe, there was Althea Gibson. Long before Ashe broke the color barrier in men’s tennis, Althea was the true pioneer. Her journey was much harder than the one Ashe endured. Part of the challenge was that Althea was female playing in an era where women’s tennis wasn’t valued by the national associations that staged tournaments at all. A larger factor was the color of her skin.
The first change that appears in the 2021 USTA Friend at Court comes courtesy of the International Tennis Federation (ITF). It is a seemingly inconsequential note appended to the Forward of the ITF Rules of Tennis. This makes it high time to revisit the relationship between the USTA and the ITF.
The “Cone Game” is one of my favorite tennis practice drills. In fact I carry a set of orange cones in my portable ball hopper at all times. Whenever a week passes when I don’t engage in this drill, I detect a perceptible drop in consistency during match play. The cone game may be the most essential drill that I perform on a regular basis.
A couple of week’s ago, the USTA sent an email last week with a link to a survey directed to all League Players. Last Monday, “Surveying USTA League Tennis: Captain’s Edition” described the questions from the survey that were directed only to players who have captained a team. Today our attention shifts to the survey questions targeted at the entire USTA League playing population.
Long time followers of the Fiend at Court will be aware that this site was originally created as an outlet for a daily goal I had established for myself to write a page a day about tennis. At the onset, I was concerned that it might be struggle to come up with enough ideas to fill a page each day. The training wheels phase of this project used a sequential walk through the Rules of Tennis as a daily prompt.
In 2020, this site published “NTRP Horror Story: When the Carrot becomes a Stick.” That post was my own personal account about abhorrent player behavior in a USTA League match. A the time, I made the assertion that the incentives attached to the NTRP system were a contributing factor in the unsportsmanlike conduct. Today I have a tiny coda to that saga.
A shockingly high number of tennis players can’t articulate the difference between the USTA and Universal Tennis. In fact, Universal Tennis sometimes doesn’t even ring a bell for players. Most tennis players have heard of the the Universal Tennis Rating (UTR) system and use that acronym as a stand in for Universal Tennis. For the sake of simplicity, I sometimes refer to Universal Tennis as UTR. When in Rome.
After my recent reading of John McPhee’s Levels of the Game, I came to the realization that I needed to brush up on my knowledge of the tennis career of Arthur Ashe. His memoir Days of Grace seemed to be an obvious place to start. Additionally, since February is Black History month, the timing is perfect. As a bonus, a hardcover edition of Days of Grace was already languishing on a shelf in my family room.