An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
At first glance, the last USTA Comment in the “Player Loses Point” section in the ITF Rules of Tennis is arguably the most bizarre encountered to date. The comment is related to a net configuration that I initially had difficulty imagining.
It is pretty common in doubles for two doubles players to simultaneously attempt to play a ball resulting in a clash of racquets. While this happens most frequently at the net, it can actually anywhere on the court with one exception.
The final case ruling in the “Player Loses Point” section in the ITF Rules of Tennis is one that almost everyone has absentmindedly violated from time to time. The technical term for this is “brain fart.”
A couple of days ago, I smugly observed that I had delayed discussion on jumping over the net in the middle of a point. That deferral was because I knew it was coming up in a future case ruling and I needed to leave myself something to write about. Today I am confronted by an ITF Case Decision that I have already covered fairly thoroughly. Oops.
If I was ever going to completely phone in my daily essay, today would be the day. That is because today’s case ruling was thoroughly covered in “Racquets gone Wild.” So what is different about this rule?
For me, some of the tennis rules are aspirational. Today’s ITF case decision falls firmly in that category. I simply do not have the athleticism to successfully violate this rule. In fact, if you ever see me even start to attempt this, just go ahead and call the ambulance. I am going to need it.
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I think we are way overdue in discussion of boundaries in tennis. Unlike other sports, tennis does not have a concept of out of bounds. For example, in basketball the player’s feet cannot touch the area outside of the court while the ball is in play. In soccer, the players feet may touch the area outside of the pitch and only the ball has to stay within the lines.
I am in the middle of a systematic march through the ITF Rules of Tennis as published in the USTA Friend at Court. In the course of doing this, I am encountering some of the ITF Case Rulings for the first time in my life. I had no idea that some of these scenarios had been codified into the rules. We have arrived at another one of those instances today.
Yesterday I described how I envision that the ITF case rulings were forged over pints of ale at the local pub. I think the case ruling from today was later in the evening of the same discussion.
I can recall exactly one dramatic instance of the racquet slipping from my hand when delivering a serve. On a very humid day, I lost my grip on the racquet on downward follow through of my service motion. It was like spiking a football after a touchdown. At no point was my racquet anywhere near the net.