How Long?

 I got into a set of games with folks that were happy to dink. Kind of a rarity for my play.  I was involved in a couple of cross court dinking battles and I was surprised how far and hard I could hit the ball.  The idea of a gentle shove or lift did not seem to apply.

So I'm thinking, "Just how far is that shot?"  And as the astute among you will already be thinking, the number 596 pops up right away.  "Metric?"  No, but we have to take the square root of that number to get to feet.  Pythagoras and early education rises to the surface.

What is that number?  Well, I don't know that one off hand and I'm too lazy to look for a calculator, ask Alexa, or dive into the box of slide rules to find the exact answer.  I do know that the square root of 625 is 25, so it's a bit less than that.  

The exact number  is not real important, because the number does not take into account the net height, nor at what altitude the initial hit is made.  But the distance is of use.  We'd all like to practice that shot and its utility becomes more important the better your opponents.  

The distance is about 8 largish steps, 24 feet.  If you pace those off from the kitchen line towards your opponent's base line you will find that 24 is about half way into the service box or the middle of the transition zone.  

If you want to practice that shot, then when warming up or drilling, practice hitting balls that will go short to middle of the transition area is of use.

 

For those who don't remember the hypotenuse equation it's the sqrt of the sum of other two legs squared, the court is 20 feet wide and the kitchen area is seven feet on each side, so we get 14 and 20 for the legs:
Hyp = sqrt(20^2 + 14^2) = sqrt(400 + 196) = 24.4...