After I swiped at the USTA/ITF yesterday for including a redundant sentence in “Change of Ends,” the Friend at Court immediately comes back at me with a one sentence rule. Well played, USTA. Well played.
Unless a fault or a let is called, the ball is in play from the moment the server hits the ball, and remains in play until the point is decided.
USTA Friend at Court, ITF Rules of Tennis, Rule 11
This rule falls into the bucket of “definitions.” The only reason it exists is to build a vocabulary of terms required to explain the more complex rules of the game. It does nothing more than to bound the time frame intended by the phrase “ball in play.”
Meditating on this rule takes me back to my second tournament match following a 28 year hiatus from competitive tennis. It was essentially the first time I had played since my junior tennis days. Before my opponent hit her first serve of the match, she said “Have fun.” My immediate visceral reaction was shock and surprise. It had honestly never occurred to me that tennis matches were supposed to be fun. It was mind changing and transformative.
Since I literally have nothing else to say about the “Ball In Play” rule, but have yet to fulfill my page a day objective in this project, I will lean into the pivot started in the previous paragraph, using it to jump to talking about the concept of tennis community.
There is a Facebook group of the active tournament players in my section. It is a terrific example of a tennis community. To illustrate this point, I posed the question to that group. “What is the last thing you say to your opponent before officially starting the match?” Within an hour, the thread received 40 comments.
This is the virtuous cycle of tennis and community. Tennis is community and community creates tennis. It would be my wish that all tennis players had access to a large and highly engaged group like the one that exists in my section.
This brings me to a fundamental truth: If we want to grow the game of tennis, we have to create and nurture positive tennis communities.
Hopping down from that soapbox, and returning to the specific question at hand, the replies to the Facebook question covered a lot of territory. Most were on the positive and encouraging side, as expected. The majority of players say “Good Luck,” “Nice Match,” “Have fun,” or something along those lines. Others were more along the lines of… shall we say spirited competition. “Bring it” would fall into that category as well as some phrases that would be strictly for the inside voice.
The thread also received some tongue in cheek responses with what I would call gamesmanship oriented phrases. Those would be things said to deliberately throw an opponent off their game. I am sure that will be a topic of this project at a future time.
In the meantime, we have successfully put the ball in play.
- United States Tennis Association (2020) Friend at Court. White Plains, NY
