An engineer overthinks tennis in a daily journal.
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.
The method of deciding the choice of ends and server was a detail that brought me to a full stop during last year’s march through the ITF Rules of Tennis. I was surprised that a particular method of deciding the choice is codified directly into the rules.
The choice of ends and the choice to be server or receiver in the first game shall be decided by toss before the warm-up starts.
I am suddenly obsessed with literary and media claims of “The Greatest” tennis matches. It was a natural next step as my examination of Strokes of Genius concluded. Strokes of Genius was published in 2009 with the phrase in the subtitle “The Greatest Match Ever Played.” By sheer coincidence, a second book was also published in the same year with a similar phrase in the subtitle. Consequently, “A Terrible Splendor: Three Extraordinary Men, a World Poised for War, and the Greatest Tennis Match Ever Played” is the next book which will be tackled by this site. It is the most natural progression.
My friend Michael always extolled the virtues of the adaptive rules of tennis for wheelchair players. Since his death in a car accident a few years ago I am frequently reminded of the gap he left in so many lives. It is almost trivial to lament the fact that I don’t have him as a resource to consult as I dive into the rules of Wheelchair tennis.
I was sitting at a computer in my local public library when realized that this project had transformed from a casual hobby into borderline obsession. For the first time I was compelled to step up the research beyond materials that I either owned or could access directly on the internet. “Best of Five” set matches for women was the topic that precipitated that transformation.
When this sequential march through the ITF Rules of Tennis was first initiated, I anticipated that discussion of wheelchair tennis might be omitted altogether. However, after the backlash against the USTA for attempting to eliminate the wheelchair tennis from the US Open in 2020, it became a topic that was impossible to ignore.
The ITF publishes a list of approved “Player Analysis Technology” devices on their official web site. Information on each device in that list includes the official report of the evaluation. Sadly, the ITF does not publish the reports for disapproved devices. However, examination of the reports from the devices that were approved reveals the factors that are generally considered.
I finally completed my reading of Levels of the Game by John McPhee. The book is a detailed account of the 1968 semi-final match between by Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner play at Forest Hills and is widely regarded as a literary masterpiece. The match is the foreground of for a much deeper cultural and societal examination. The backgrounds and attitudes which shaped each player are interwoven with the match play.