An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
There is a lot to break down in Marshall Jon Fisher’s A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played. On the surface, the book is about a tennis match between Don Budge and Gottfried Von Cramm played during the 1937 Davis Cup. It is also a unique account of the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party in the run up to World War 2.
Wheelchair players compete under the ITF Rules of Tennis. The modifications for wheelchair tennis are relatively minor. This establishes tennis as one of the premiere sports for adaptive competition. Head to head competition is possible between adaptive and non-adaptive competitors.
Arthur Ashe started training under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Johnson in Lynchburg, Virginia at the age of 10. Before Ashe and all the other players in Dr. Johnson’s program were allowed on the tennis court, they had to first demonstrate mastery of a device known as “The Tom Stow Stroke Developer.” Levels of the Game by John McPhee provides a detailed description.
A couple of months ago there was a spirited thread on the National Senior Men’s Tennis Association (NSMTA) discussion board regarding consolation brackets at National Cat/Level 1 tennis tournaments. Some of the viewpoints and experiences expressed in that forum illuminated the feedback that most likely will influence back draw implementation once competitive play results at that level.
There are no rules specific to the control of infectious disease in the 2020 ITF Rules of Tennis. The same can be said for the USTA Friend at Court. That is not a surprise because when both of those publications were released last year, COVID-19 was not yet a major concern. As a result, COVID-19 has the distinction of being the first content on this site that was completely unrelated to the ITF Rules of Tennis.
When I first embarked on the project manifested by the Fiend at Court site, I would have asserted that I have little personal interest in the early history of international and professional tennis. The first appearances of early tennis stars in what was published was in the context of newspaper articles summarizing proposed changes to the ITF Rules of Tennis of their time. I am embarrassed to say, that some names that I did not initially recognize are now turning up repeatedly in the tennis books of their era.
The method of deciding the choice of ends and server was a detail that brought me to a full stop during last year’s march through the ITF Rules of Tennis. I was surprised that a particular method of deciding the choice is codified directly into the rules.
The choice of ends and the choice to be server or receiver in the first game shall be decided by toss before the warm-up starts.
I am suddenly obsessed with literary and media claims of “The Greatest” tennis matches. It was a natural next step as my examination of Strokes of Genius concluded. Strokes of Genius was published in 2009 with the phrase in the subtitle “The Greatest Match Ever Played.” By sheer coincidence, a second book was also published in the same year with a similar phrase in the subtitle. Consequently, “A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played” is the next book which will be tackled by this site. It is the most natural progression.
My friend Michael always extolled the virtues of the adaptive rules of tennis for wheelchair players. Since his death in a car accident a few years ago I am frequently reminded of the gap he left in so many lives. It is almost trivial to lament the fact that I don’t have him as a resource to consult as I dive into the rules of Wheelchair tennis.
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.