Tennis has a strong bearing on how I mark time. One prominent example of that is habitually reporting my age in “USTA Years.” For example, I currently say that I am 59, even though my birthday when that will be officially true in every other context, doesn’t come for a few more months. Today is another example of how tennis dominates my perception of the actual calendar.

Yesterday, I shared a rules situation that arose at the HTA RBC Wealth Management Houston Open Level 4 tournament last weekend, where something was just a little off. Today features a second story from that same event that runs along the same lines.

I arrived on site Sunday morning, a few games before the Women’s 4.5 Singles Final was about to split sets. It was im...

When you spend as much time as I do thinking about rules, process, and how things are supposed to work, it becomes difficult not to notice when something looks even slightly off. That happened to me last weekend at the HTA/RBC Wealth Management Houston Open Level 4 tournament.

I was watching a match when a player on an adjacent court did something that caught my ey...

Robert Lansdorp’s Building a Champion is best understood as the legendary coach’s own words, partially shaped and organized by Bill Patton. Even so, the word “organized” might be misleading. Patton’s editorial notes describe the book as a tricky, fragmented work, and I found that assessment to be accurate. Lansdorp passed away in September 2024, and the book wa...

The 2026 USTA Friend at Court was released earlier this month. As is typically the case, the updates are modest, and the core rules of tennis remain largely unchanged. However, the rulebook includes a handful of minor clarifications and administrative updates worth examining. This post is a part of a continuing series taking a closer look at what actually chang...