Fiend at Court Unplugged
Extolling the virtues of “The EGO Leaf Blower” earlier this week, brought back a wave of memories of my times spent leaning over a squeegee. A significant part of my junior tennis career was spent drying courts… for my baby brother’s impending tournament match. I don’t recall him ever returning the favor for me, but to be fair, I also can’t recall a time when I went further in a tournament than he did that would have precipitated (see what I did there?) that opportunity.
I am old enough to remember the days before the advent of the squeegee. Before that invention, we simply used brooms to spread out puddles on the court. When advertisements for the now ubiquitous sponged rollers first appeared, the head pro at one of my hometown tennis centers requested that the city purchase some for his facility. They bought two. For twelve courts.
Since my return to tennis as an adult, I have discovered that I am frequently annoyed at the… lack of enthusiasm… that people seem to have for drying courts. After a lifetime of being unceremoniously shoved out of the back seat of the family sedan the moment that raindrops ceased to fall, it shocks me to discover that the rest of the world isn’t similarly wired to spring into action.
In the early stages of the tennis playing career of the umpire I gave birth to, she played a tournament that started with a rain delay. Once the showers stopped, several families emerged from their vehicles to grab a squeegee and work on the courts. The number of people who did this was slightly less than the number of squeegees available at the facility. There was always at least one idly leaning against the fence.
When it was apparent that the courts were nearing playable conditions, the site director went around and collected the player names associated with everyone who had been bending over a squeegee all morning. Those players were awarded the first playable courts. That is a rare practice. Usually the site director blindly puts the matches based on the “top-down” draw order.
I was standing by the tournament desk when the father of the player seeded first in my daughter’s draw threw a conniption fit over the fact that his child was not assigned to the first court. The fact that she was seeded first was repeated — loudly — during his indignant rant. As it turns out, being seeded does not grant a player immunity from helping dry the courts. They probably wrote a scathing tournament evaluation. Mine was glowing.
As an adult, I have had the experience of drying my own court for the resumption of a match in progress, while my opponent was no where to be seen. At my age, usually that practice is rewarded by playing out the remainder of the match with a stiff back. It bothers me. A lot.
I have tried a policy of only picking up the squeegee if my opponent is also doing the same. That puts me in a state of cognitive dissonance. It just feels wrong. That sense is not as bad as it feels to lose a winnable match due to fatigue from drying a court while my opponent slept in their car. That is much, much, worse.
I have been thinking about this in terms of player experience at tennis tournaments. When it rains during a tournament, that generally sucks for everyone. Rain is something that cannot be controlled or avoided. It creates a whole host of issues for tournament organizers beyond energizing and organizing a cadre of people to dry the courts.
Some players openly complain about how tournaments handle rain relays and rescheduling. My observation is that those are generally the same players who go missing in action when the opportunity to help out actually arises.
I long for a universal etiquette for pitching in when courts need to be dried at a tournament. Alternatively, perhaps the universal standard of just waiting it out is already well established and I just need to catch up with the rest of the world.
