Ken and friend.
"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure."
-Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)"
What we should note for future reference is: when was the first day this year that you wore sweats to play tennis? When was the first day that you wore sweats while playing tennis? When did you drink your first hot coffee rather than iced? When did you turn the heat on in your Volvo on the way to the club? When did you play your first indoor tennis of the year?
For many of us, the answer to all of the above is: one day last week.
Yep, it's cooled down. The indoor courts are open. Indoor contracts have started. The sun is low here at the club: it's hard to serve, hard to follow lobs.
But wait, the weather is bee-you-tee-ful. The courts are late-season perfection. The lemonade has matured. The birds still trill, the flowers still bloom.
We feel bad for people who play indoors at this time of year. And people who are playing indoors only? We feel very bad.
The courts are packed every day from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and again at 4:00 p.m. and every hour on the weekend. Prime time is semi-deserted.
This year's tournaments have been cancelled for lack of interest except for the Mixed Doubles Tournament. The tournament will take place on the weekend of October 15. The sign-up sheet is on the porch bulletin board. We have many entries, but much room.
Where have you been, we ask (regularly). Well, Ken sent along a picture:
While regulars, like Ken, have been occupied elsewhere, newer members have been playing a lot.
THE FORCED WINNER, by Tennis Tigress
I propose a new concept to add to the tennis lexicon: THE FORCED WINNER.
You force a winner when you hit a brilliant shot that just forces your opponent to hit either a dribble-winner or a smash winner unintentionally.
Examples:
1. Zelda makes a winning down-the-line return of a fast deep serve. The server, Thalia, is responsible because she forced the receiver, Zelda, to flail away and hit late and bingbango - right down the line for a morale crushing winner. Zelda! You lucky cretin!
2. Another example is based on Geoff Harvey's concept of PRECISION TENNIS, which entails placing the ball precisely on the opposing player's racquet: Player A (Brad) hits an overhead smash right onto Player B's (Chadsworth's) racquet head, which is low to the ground in Crisis Mode, and Chadsworth's racquet head unintentionally, or halfway unintentionally, redirects the power of the oncoming shot to bounce the ball off (blob the ball) as a winning lob (or LOBBY, because it is both a lob and a volley - yet another excruciatingly apt term to add to the tennis lex). "Chadsworth! I can't believe that wasn't luck. You're sooo bad at tennis."
3. Zelda starts a point with a pitiful dink serve that barely clears the net, forcing Thalia to charge in towards the net and, if Thalia gets to the ball, to return a winning drop shot.
"Oh Thalia!," she cries. "You blighter."
4. (The Forced Winner by way of netcord) Thalia and Chadsworth are playing doubles against Dobie and Zelda....
"You can observe a lot just by watching." -- Yogi Berra
"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. Bettern't we?)
Take a look
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.
The club book, right now, should be right by your hand. The website also has up-to-date info. The Rules section, the Governors and Committees and Activities (tournaments, round robins, etc) sections are current for 2005. Also, the Waiting List (which is not featured in the book) is current and ordered on the website. (The Waiting List and the list of New Members can be accessed through the FAQ page.) We thank the committee heads for making the information available in such a timely fashion and we urge all public spirited readers to proof-read.
'Members', and' Reservation Requests' are not active parts of the site nowadays. 'Timelines' is for adepts.
We'll keep the tournament draws available on-line (including all of the results), thanks to the Java Kid:
And the previous tournaments:
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Tournaments |
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And here's the saga of 2002's tournaments (so's we can compare and contrast):
And the saga of the year before (we're mighty fancy here, and mighty grateful to the Java Kid for doing all this work):
Phew.
The Yearbook link will take you to the last newspage from 2004. From there you can see the whole of the Persistant 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 (2004). The less-than link (<) next to the honeycomb icon will take you to the last issue of the newspage.
