An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
When mapping out books to cover during Black History month this year, Zina: My Life in Women’s Tennis was an immediate selection. Zina Garrison emerged from a public park’s program in Houston, which makes her book an obvious choice for a tennis blog sourced from Texas. Additionally, she was my Dad’s favorite player. It was a foregone conclusion that this book would come up pretty quickly in the rotation.
The recent spate of arctic weather makes this the perfect time to discuss the inflatable tennis bubble. Desmond Margetson, a black American tennis player and engineer is the inventor of the structure that enables seasonal indoor tennis. Since February is designated as Black History month AND the week of February 21-27 is designated as “Engineers Week” it is the perfect time to discuss the tennis bubble.
“Tennis is the perfect social-distancing sport—and the numbers continue to prove it.” That is the first line from a USTA news article last week touting an increase in tennis participation in the United States. The headline of the same press release is “U.S. tennis participation surges in 2020, Physical Activity Council (PAC) report finds.” So what exactly is the PAC and what is in that report?
When I came across a couple of 80’s era tennis outfits featured in “The 80’s Called: Vintage Elesse Tennis Clothes,” I was wondering if the house of the Umpire Who Gave Birth to me would eventually surrender a picture of me wearing those ensembles from my playing days. I had a lot of time to sift through boxes of old photos last week as Texas endured 3rd world country performance of the power grid amidst winter storms. Fun times.
The Fiend at Court “Unplugged” series continues to revisit posts made in 2020. This is possibly the longest “Year in Review” in the history of casual blogging. Today this retrospective has reached the inevitable topic of pickleball. If the Fiend at Court goes the same way as the racquet sports industry is trending, there is a dystopian future where this site issues daily content on pickleball. It is my life’s mission to prevent that from happening.
Since February is Black History Month, I have been focusing on books about African American tennis players. In the previous two weeks, we have discussed Arthur Ashe in “Days of Grace” and Althea Gibson in “The Match.” If you’re going to talk about the history of black players at the highest levels of competitive tennis, Ashe and Althea are the two obvious places to start.
The recently released 2021 Friend at Court includes three new USTA comments against the ITF Rules of Tennis. Since this site is currently in the middle of exploring the section of that contains the Rules of Wheelchair Tennis, it makes sense to cover these comments now. This requires a little backtracking. All three of the new USTA comments are in the main body of the ITF Rules of Tennis rather than the wheelchair section.
Prior to listening to the podcast interview that inspired the post “Donald Dell Fires Shots Across the USTA Bow,” I had never heard of Donald Dell. Alternatively, maybe I had and just didn’t remember. The only reason Dell appeared as a primary topic on this site was courtesy of an interview he gave on Jon Wertheim’s podcast. Dell was critical of how the USTA promotes and develops tennis in the United States. His ideas and opinions resonated with me.
I first wrote about the decline of the tennis culture in my hometown in “Life on the Border: Tennis Wastelands.” Wichita Falls used to be a hotbed for tennis, but that simply isn’t the case anymore. While the umpire who gave birth to me continues to recover from the injury she sustained shortly before Thanksgiving, I have been spending a lot of time in my childhood home. For someone who spent 35 years away, the decline in participation is jarring.
Before Arthur Ashe, there was Althea Gibson. Long before Ashe broke the color barrier in men’s tennis, Althea was the true pioneer. Her journey was much harder than the one Ashe endured. Part of the challenge was that Althea was female playing in an era where women’s tennis wasn’t valued by the national associations that staged tournaments at all. A larger factor was the color of her skin.