theenrighthouse
New User
I would be keen for people to share a few thoughts on some of the finer points of tennis etiquette for beginning players.
I played with a friend yesterday and she brought along a relative beginner (only played for a year) and so we hit with two people on one side and one on the other.
The whole session was a nightmare, not because my friend's friend (let's call him "father", as he was a priest) was rude, but because he didn't understand some of the unspoken rules of playing.
1) We played on a facility that was about to hold a USTA ranking tournament. We arrived at the courts two hours before the start of the event and took a court and started hitting. After an hour we noticed a few players wanting to warm up and my friend and I wanted to vacate the court, but "father" made a royal fuss about how he wanted to keep playing until the start of the tournament (he was a professor at the facility, so felt entitled). Painful.
Lesson: get the F off the court to let tournament players warm up. And don't even think about playing on a court that is adjacent to a league/tournament match. This is poor form, especially if you have a crap player who is constantly spraying shots into the adjacent court.
2) My friend was a former couch and, in her prime, was rated 5.5-6.0. She's now in her 50's but has 40 years of hitting behind her. I'm a 4.5 roughly, with solid pace, directional control and good baseline consistency. I've played for more than 15 years. "Father" is probably a 2.5 AT BEST, yet he wanted to play singles side to get more of a work out. God! My friend and I were bored to tears. He has no consistency and zero direction control, meaning you could stand there and not get a decent ball to hit for over a minute.
Lesson: If you're playing with three players, and you're the weakest player. You never, ever push to play singles side. You count yourself grateful to be allowed to play with much better players and shut up. Let the better players handle singles side, to ensure the other two players get into some rhythm and hit an equal amount of balls.
3) He knew one of the players who was playing a match as part of the tournament. My friend and I were walking back to the car, and to our horror, we see "father" walking onto one of the match courts (during change overs) to talk to his acquaintance, and my friend and I nearly fainted.
Lesson: Never, ever, ever walk onto a match court, even if they are changing side. A match is a universe populated by two players and officials. No one else has any right to walk onto a match court.
4) If you're playing with 6 balls, and players still have balls in their pockets, then you don't go picking up that one single ball that just went out. Especially if you are on the singles side!! Keep playing, lest the other two players turn to stone out of boredom. (Obviously, I am not talking about balls hovering around the baseline that could be a hazard).
Lesson: Don't chronically go fetching balls if other players still have balls: it's annoying!
So yeah, "father" is a decent guy, but just clueless about some of these finer points of etiquette.
What are some things that have annoyed you in the past when playing with beginners? and what are some of the rules/conventions that you think beginners most commonly neglect/are unaware of.
I played with a friend yesterday and she brought along a relative beginner (only played for a year) and so we hit with two people on one side and one on the other.
The whole session was a nightmare, not because my friend's friend (let's call him "father", as he was a priest) was rude, but because he didn't understand some of the unspoken rules of playing.
1) We played on a facility that was about to hold a USTA ranking tournament. We arrived at the courts two hours before the start of the event and took a court and started hitting. After an hour we noticed a few players wanting to warm up and my friend and I wanted to vacate the court, but "father" made a royal fuss about how he wanted to keep playing until the start of the tournament (he was a professor at the facility, so felt entitled). Painful.
Lesson: get the F off the court to let tournament players warm up. And don't even think about playing on a court that is adjacent to a league/tournament match. This is poor form, especially if you have a crap player who is constantly spraying shots into the adjacent court.
2) My friend was a former couch and, in her prime, was rated 5.5-6.0. She's now in her 50's but has 40 years of hitting behind her. I'm a 4.5 roughly, with solid pace, directional control and good baseline consistency. I've played for more than 15 years. "Father" is probably a 2.5 AT BEST, yet he wanted to play singles side to get more of a work out. God! My friend and I were bored to tears. He has no consistency and zero direction control, meaning you could stand there and not get a decent ball to hit for over a minute.
Lesson: If you're playing with three players, and you're the weakest player. You never, ever push to play singles side. You count yourself grateful to be allowed to play with much better players and shut up. Let the better players handle singles side, to ensure the other two players get into some rhythm and hit an equal amount of balls.
3) He knew one of the players who was playing a match as part of the tournament. My friend and I were walking back to the car, and to our horror, we see "father" walking onto one of the match courts (during change overs) to talk to his acquaintance, and my friend and I nearly fainted.
Lesson: Never, ever, ever walk onto a match court, even if they are changing side. A match is a universe populated by two players and officials. No one else has any right to walk onto a match court.
4) If you're playing with 6 balls, and players still have balls in their pockets, then you don't go picking up that one single ball that just went out. Especially if you are on the singles side!! Keep playing, lest the other two players turn to stone out of boredom. (Obviously, I am not talking about balls hovering around the baseline that could be a hazard).
Lesson: Don't chronically go fetching balls if other players still have balls: it's annoying!
So yeah, "father" is a decent guy, but just clueless about some of these finer points of etiquette.
What are some things that have annoyed you in the past when playing with beginners? and what are some of the rules/conventions that you think beginners most commonly neglect/are unaware of.
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