I didn't play 16 hours, but I watched it this weekend at the Harvest Crush tournament.
For those who were not there, I was one of the runners. We had several duties. The first being to get new players out to the proper court, making sure we had the correct players, talked them through the coin toss routine, and then to collect and check over the score cards when the match was over.
I decided early on that doing those tasks inside the fence was good idea. I could quickly see if a match was over and grab the score card and I could keep a few balls from running into the neighboring court. And then I had a better view of the action.
There was a mix of beginners, the intermediates, and then the advanced players. I'm using those terms loosely as I'd like to contrast the playing styles of each group.
With the beginners, the ball was frequently hit quite high over the net. There was a lot of shots hit either straight across the net or lobby in nature. We don't see much of the lobby shots at the Downs except in folks just starting out.
Beginners were also unable to hit the ball towards an opponent's feet. The shots were waist level and above. I didn't see a lot of poaching either. The feet move more the better the player on average.
Beginners hit a lot of balls long. Also there were some dinks, but not a lot.
The intermediates hit their shots more flat and lower to the net. There was very little dinking, maybe less than the beginners, as these players could get the ball down and could hit the ball harder. They poached a bit and were very willing to hit long balls. The points were pretty quickly over as "smash it until it hurts" was a common mantra. A lot of out balls were played as rallies were frequently done with no players at the baselines. It was kind of bang the third shot and then hit everything else harder.
In both the beginners and intermediates, there were very few third shot drops. Drive, drive drive for glory!
If we look at the best players out there, I finally saw some drop shots, but it was not a universal strategy. There was still a lot of banging. The people who did drop, did pretty well with it.
Finally as for strokes, I saw very little backhand rolls or top spin backhand shots. Backhands were struck as a swipe, or cut shot. There was one guy who had some roll to his backhand and it was quite effective. I've become convinced that this is a very useful shot. I saw a lot of dinks that bounced quite high to people's backhands and the return shot was invariably a dink. I would have rolled a bunch of them.
Let me talk about speedups for a moment. This was not always in a dink battle. No one was hesitant about hitting the ball harder at any time. However, I saw some great block shots and counter shots from everyone out there. It maybe that these counter shots were within my ability, but it since I can't see myself play, the speed of the counters seemed to be scary fast. It seemed that the people who first sped up the point were quite likely to lose it too. The blocks were better than the speed ups. One might want to be more careful about when to speed up a point. But back to the prevalent theme, it was hit as hard and as often as possible!
Serves were nothing important relative to all the other play. I didn't see a lot of service errors, except in a couple of the beginner matches. There was one guy with a spin serve, but he never aced anyone and no one had problems returning his shots. My philosophy in re serves is to get them in at all costs seems vindicated at the tournament level with these players.
Heat... I was out on the courts for a long time. Saturday was very hot and I was feeling it and I was hanging around in shady spots whenever I could. If you are playing, don't waste energy in warming up for more than the first match. I drank a lot of water too. I wasn't running much, but I managed 14,000 steps per day. Find shade, a breeze, and wear a hat! There were folks with no hat and no sunglasses out there -- perhaps they were made of sterner stuff than myself.
Let me pass on a couple of suggestions to the tournament organizers... I think the tournament was run quite very well. All the players I talked to were very positive about that. There was not much waiting for the next match. Food, snacks, water was well done and welcome -- they took care of the players and volunteers quite well.
The sound system was good, probably could have been louder when calling players to matches, though this was a minor matter.
It would have been useful to be able to pass scorecards to the scorer by passing them through the fence rather than having to walk them around every time. If you ever build a tournament court system, it's something to keep in mind.
There were a couple of instances where the rules came up and it would be nice if a couple of the club members had referee credentials /experience so that on court disputes could be handled quickly. We runners were in the middle of a lot of it and having one or more of us with more rules knowledge would have been useful.
If there had been more courts and if they had been spread out, having a radio to call a rules judge to a court would have been useful. It didn't matter at May Nissan, but I could see it at a larger venue.
If you play tournaments, let me pass on the role of the players and runners and directors. It is the player's job to make line calls. If the ball is too close to call out, then it is in. If the calling players split on the call, then the ball is in.
You cannot dispute a line call by an opponent. An agreement to "play the point over" is to me a gray area. If it's like golf, then you don't get to vote as the rule is absolute. I suspect that as soon as someone calls a ball out, the point is over. (I could use some rule learnin' myself!) If they call it out, play stops, then they reverse the call, I'd still guess the point is over and goes against the calling team.
If you are in a situation where a lot of calls seem wrong, then have a runner talk to the director and get a line judge or referee to judge the rest of the match. Note that asking a runner or spectator if the ball was in or out is not part of the game. If a runner sees a bad call, they should not speak up or pass on their "view" if asked. I saw one bad call that I was close to and a few others from distance that didn't look correct, but my opinion was not relevant to the play and I wasn't asked.
There was one interesting point upon which I was consulted. It was in the intermediate play and the teams were stacking. The wrong player served the point and the point was played out. At that point the opposing team called the service error.
My understanding of the rule is that as soon as the wrong player hits the ball, a fault has occurred and the point is over. I don't know what happens if the next point is played before the error is determined...
OK, but what happens if the proper server serves but the opponents are positioned incorrectly? The point ends when the wrong person hits the service ball. But suppose the server hits the serve out to the wrong person? My guess is that there is no receiver fault since the incorrect player never hit the ball and the normal service out ball is the end of the point. You're allowed to stand where ever you like, so in this case no hit, no foul. One more reason to always serve in!
There was an incredible amount of work that went into running the tournament. Kudos to the organizers and volunteers who put up and took down both days, fed and watered the volunteers and made it all happen with ball blockers and signs and ladders and tie-wraps and a thousand details that had to be done. My part was tiny, but I could appreciate all the effort the board and their helpers put in.
It was fun to volunteer and I'd encourage others to try it. The job of runner is a good one as there are a lot of movement and you could get a good view of the action. More runners are a good thing, so try it if you have an interest.
Did I want to play after watching it all close up? Nope! It looked like work to me and medal hunting is not an interest of mine. I'm more than happy to play with friends where the result is almost meaningless!
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