The Rules of Tennis
The 2021 edition of the USTA Friend at Court was released a little over a week ago. As was anticipated after examining the 2021 ITF Rules of Tennis earlier this year, there are no substantive rule changes involving match play in this year’s updates. However, there are some significant structural changes that were made to the Friend at Court as well as a slew of new USTA event regulations.
At the speed that the USTA operates, the structural updates were clearly already in work when I made the following observations at the end of last November in “USTA Texas Tournament Update for 2021.”
In the webinars previously released by USTA National it has been stated on a couple of occasions that it takes two years to update the USTA Friend at Court. That means that the new tournament regulations in 2021 will be a temporary annex to that document. It also means that we will all be playing outside the official rules while waiting for the USTA Friend at Court to catch up.
In the meantime, I am pondering the structure that is the sacred text of the USTA Friend at Court. Essentially the daily rules exploration superimposed with the upcoming tournament changes for 2021 has prompted an exegesis of that document. It is possibly time to consider a major restructuring of the USTA Friend at Court for the purpose of maintainability and clarity.
USTA Texas Tournament Update for 2021, Fiend at Court, November 20, 2021
Indeed, it appears that the USTA is already heading down that path. Four major sections have been pulled from the USTA Friend at Court and will now be maintained as separate documents. That allows the USTA to transfer ownership and responsibility down to the committee level. This eliminates an inefficient bottleneck when updates are required for the following areas:
- USTA Adult and Family Tournament, Ranking, and Sanctioning Regulations
- USTA Junior Tournament, Ranking, and Sanctioning Regulations
- USTA Net Generation Pathway Regulations
- USTA Wheelchair Tournament, Ranking, and Sanctioning Regulations
The removal of these sections is supported by new tournament regulations that are intended to apply to all USTA tournaments. However, that addition came with new language that sections and districts are allowed create localized regulations “as long as they are not inconsistent with the ITF Rules of Tennis, USTA Regulations, and the applicable (Net Generation, Adult and Family, Junior, or Wheelchair) USTA Tournament, Ranking, and Sanctioning regulations.” It may take a little time to digest the full implications of those updates.
There are also some new USTA regulations in the 2021 USTA Friend at Court. This site has touched only tangentially on some of the topics that are impacted by the new regulations. Others are completely outside what has been previously discussed on this site. I am still figuring out how to approach this year’s updates in a way that is consistent with the spirit of the Fiend at Court philosophy.
There are three new USTA comments to the ITF Rules of Tennis. All three of the new comments are relevant to the rules of Wheelchair tennis. In a fortunate coincidence, that is the exact section that is the current focus of the Wednesday “The Rules of Tennis” series. Those three new comments will be covered as the analysis of the rules of Wheelchair tennis resumes.
The 2021 USTA Friend at Court has provided change markings in the document in the locations where there were substantive updates. Updates are highlighted by vertical lines in the margins next to the update. The following excerpt illustrates new USTA Comment 29.1
All USTA players should take a few minutes to scan through the 2021 USTA Friend at Court to determine if any regulatory updates impact their specific circumstances.
- United States Tennis Association (2021), Friend at Court: Handbook of Rules and Regulations, White Plains, NY
