An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
The 2020 Olympic tennis tournament didn’t turn out the way that most people expected. In recent history, the Olympic draws have been littered with breakout performances and unexpected results. As the tennis comes to a close at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, a sea of news articles and columns on stunning upsets in the draws is unleashed once again. It is only surprising that people are surprised.
Tennis was restored as an Olympic Medal Sport in 1988. The very fact that the word is “restored” rather than “added” reveals that tennis was a part of the Olympics in the past. That leads to the very obvious question of why tennis was excluded from the Olympic games in the first place.
With the medal rounds underway for Olympic tennis, and the games nearing a close you might be wondering exactly how much a Gold Medal is worth. Winning a gold medal is priceless of course, but the object itself has value. Additionally, many national Olympic committees pay their athletes a bonus for winning a medal. If Olympic glory is viewed as a purely financial transaction however, it is completely understandable why so many tennis players would elect to skip the event.
Pam Shriver’s book is a “Year in the Life” account based on her personal diary from 1985. While technically categorized as an autobiography, it is more accurately regarded as a snapshot of one year presented in sharp relief. Many of the details recorded in the book are not significant in the overall arc of Shriver’s life story. However, every day is a fascinating account of what professional tennis life was like in the mid-1980’s.
A recent Wall Street Journal column recommended a tennis swing training device for developing a smooth service motion. Of all the gadgets recommended in that piece, the most clearly useful item is a tennis service swing trainer. The commercial version of the device is made of molded rubber into the form of a racquet handle connected to three tennis ball sized lumps via a cord. A correct serving motion keeps the tennis “balls” in continuous motion.
Tennis news this week largely centered on action from the Olympics and Novak Djokovic’s quest for the Golden Slam.
As dominant as the United States women are in professional tennis at the moment, there is one country that is arguably just as strong: The Czech Republic. The small country currently boasts five players in the top 50 in the WTA singles rankings. Additionally, with six of the top 50 WTA doubles players including three in the top 10, the tiny country is a usually a prohibitive favorite to carry the Fed Cup doubles tie.
I tried something a little different this week to expand the breadth of news that appears on this site. This post highlights the tennis news stories that were just outside of the mainstream media from the past week that I found to be interesting or compelling. Please drop me a comment and let me know what you think.
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In the United States television broadcasts of the 2021 Roland Garros tournament (more popularly known as the French Open) was carried by a partnership between NBC and the Tennis Channel. For the first time in history, the addition of lights at Roland Garros enabled a night session at the tournament. The tournament organizers decided that the start of the night session would be 9pm time in Paris. From a media perspective, this should have created a viewing bonanza in the United States. Unfortunately, tennis fans will likely remember what happened this year as the Peacock disaster.
Last week the Umpire who Gave Birth to Me clipped out a column from my hometown newspaper titled “Where have you gone Conners, McEnroe, Agassi and Pete?” When exploring the fragmented nature of media coverage of professional tennis in the United States yesterday, I may have stumbled onto a possible answer to that question. The stars of American tennis didn’t leave the sport but rather the sport left the United States.