An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
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.
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.
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.
Remember that time when Andy Murray couldn’t keep his balls in his shorts? In 2012, there was an issue with Murray’s clothing that resulted in tennis balls accidentally falling out of his pocket during points. The recurring hindrance calls forced Adidas to make a mid-tournament update to his shorts to address his issues. It is an interesting case study in a hindrance caused by something that is within a player’s control yet still unintentional.
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Fiend At Court spent a virtual six weeks with Dennis Ralston in 2020. To be more precise, this site spent six weeks on a structured improvement program inspired and derived from Six Weeks to a Better Level of Tennis, a book he authored with Barry Tarshis. Unfortunately, Ralston passed away last month following a long battle with cancer. Revisiting the Fiend at Court “Six Weeks” project became compulsory with his passing.
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.