"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...."
-Yeats
We're not deserted, exactly, but we are not so busy. (Do you all play tennis with each other on the Vineyard?) Weekends are slow. Even Rick Rose went away this weekend - to a tournament, natch. The pace picks up after, or on, Labor Day. And September is our second busiest month.
Darkness eats the back courts now by, say, 7:45.
We heard a mathematician pal say, in an off-hand remark, that the stars spin. The stars spin. Did someone say spin? The remark got our minds going, and we approached some of our mathematician and astronomers and astro-physicists pals (that's right: we have some) and asked them, is it true? Stars spin? Well, yes, they replied. Would you write about the 'cosmic spin' and relate it to tennis ball spin? Well, no, they universally replied.
So we turned to one of our favorite correspondents, Nature Girl, who can explain just about anything, and we asked her to write something for the newspage about spin.
(The newsroom staff)...asked me to write about 'spin.' The universal truth about spin is that no one really understands it. Spin is a mysterious thing, on and off the tennis court. Spin gives you surprises.
Most everything spins. At the sub-atomic level, everything spins (except that some few things have 'spin-zero' which really boggles the mind. In tennis, though, it's the beginners who have spin-zero). At the cosmic level, everything spins: planets spin, moons spin (bet you didn't know that), stars spin, galaxies spin, the cosmos itself spins.
Your question is, top-spin or under-spin? Scientists would regard the question as meaningless because the answer would depend on where the questioner was located in the cosmos. Plus, there are messy quantum issues, especially if you played on sub-atomic courts.
Some things spin like crazy and don't go anywhere, like drop shots. Or like inertia. I heard on the radio a definition of inertia that is of interest here: a potato that is on the couch tends to stay on the couch. Now, that potato could be spinning at a terrific clip, it just doesn't get up and mash itself.
So if your head is spinning, or you're spinning your wheels, don't panic - you are part of the comic, I mean cosmic, spin. You are like a drop shot or the Great Spiral Nebula.
-Nature Girl
| The next round robin is scheduled for Thursday, August 31. The meal will be catered, the weather sparkling, the company scintillating. Tennis begins at 6:00. |
| The sign-up sheet for the Mixed Doubles Tournament is posted on the porch bulletin board. The tournament is scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, September 9 and 10. Please sign up in a timely fashion. |
The club book should be in your hands always. Meanwhile, much of the book's information is now available on the website. (Thanks to Sheila and Ann for getting the info to us in a timely fashion.) Events, Rules, Governors and Committees are all updated, as is the New Members List. When is the next Round Robin?
The website has a long overdue new feature: a Champions Page (recently updated). Check it out.
The website has another new and important feature, the President's Corner. Check it out.
And we've added new info on the membership process. Check out MEMBERSHIP.
We still have the tournament draws (from 2001 to 2004) available on-line (including all of the results), thanks to the Java Kid. We are re-locating the links, however.
"On the court, tennis players exchange not only ground strokes but lots of information. It's a richly interactive sport, both verbally and non-verbally. If players communicate clearly, simply, and consistently, the game will proceed more quickly, and with less fuss and misunderstanding. Here are a few guidelines that can make the game more fun, friendly, and fair for all...."
We've had some requests to run Craig Lambert's piece, sampled above, on Tennis Communication. (We'd better leave this link up on the newspage permanently.)
Some useful links:
And here's a link to the espn site, with pro ranking.
And a club member (let's call him Sol) suggested a link to the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I. The site is rich.
Website note: The website does have all of the information available in the club book on-line.
'Timelines' is for adepts.
Yearbook link will take you to the last newspage from 2005. From there you can see the whole of the Persistent Archive of last year's news.
Website Note: The time and temperature icon below is a link to a Boston weather site.
Joe DeBassio, Webmaster
Website Note II: The honey-comb icon is also a link. It takes the clicker to an archive of all the past news pages so that you can read the news pages for the whole year (2006). The less-than link (<) next to the honeycomb icon will take you to the previous issue of this year's newspage.
This version is archived at: https://www.cambridgetennisclub.com/News/News2006.29.en.html
