u/DukSaus

After spending the last year at plugging holes in my groundstrokes, I have developed a pretty decent baseline game with a balanced heavy driving FH and a really heavy 2HBH. I was hitting really well the other day during a 4-hour session, and noticed that my opponents (people who hit with me a lot ) were not just clipping under the ball a lot but also sometimes shanking towards the tip
of the racket (and twice total whiffs). After the initial couple hours, my buddies said that the balls were jumping up from the topspin, but also seemed to have a curve or kick wide. For instance, they said that the 2HBH out wide seemed to curve away from them. They also said that when I hit a down the line shot with a buggy whip follow through, there was an odd side spin that made it hard to catch in the air and also off the bounce.

This leads to my question: how prevalent is sidespin in heavy balls? And if it is prevalent, is there a way to manipulate it?

For final context, I am 3.5ish who generally takes fast cuts and have a variable takeback depending on the ball/shot. I like to stay quite low and spent a lot of time in the past 18 mos. on weight transfer and spacing. Balls are heavy. Racket is v8 Vcore 98. Strings are Super Toro + Enso Pro.

So, I play in a two hour 4.0 clinic where we play doubles sets for the last hour or so. There is a player who, between points, constantly returns balls to my back. On multiple occasions, I’ve asked him to just make sure I’m looking when he returns balls to me. Today, it comes to a head when the coach is providing feedback on the prior point and I’m half turned in discussion with the coach and my partner. Again, the ball is returned to me with no heads up and today it hits my crotch. I immediately tell him that it happens all the time and to just stop—admittedly pretty firmly (“Hey, you do this all the time. STOP.”) He shrugs. And I just say, “Dude, just apologize.” It escalates as he says I’ve been hitting returns to him at the net, and so it’s fine that he did what he did. Granted, this is true. I had been hitting returns with dipping topspin down the line or towards the middle. Given that he tends to hug the net and poaches well, this strategy worked as it would dip and he’d either hit it into the net or provide a weak and short bouncing volley that my partner would put away, and as a result we were breaking his partner’s serve easily. The argument spilled over to after the class. His position: he can hit balls at me because I was hitting towards him at the net. My position, which I relayed to him: This is men’s doubles. I can go at you if that’s the play that’s working. If he can’t defend the net with these shots, back up. At the end of it, his refusal to apologize just tilted me more than I’ve ever experienced on or off the court in recent memory. Whenever someone isn’t prepared to receive the ball but a player sends it over regardless, I’ve always seen it that the player apologizes. I try my best to always call out the opponent’s name when sending over balls. I also learned from playing early with Asian players who follow the etiquette of showing balls high before feeding or serving (and depending on the community, will even follow the etiquette of a small bow before the serve)—but I recognize that this isn’t ubiquitous. I just don’t understand the rationale that hitting at the net player or down the line meant that he didn’t have to apologize for hitting me with a ball.

I will admit that it did escalate more than I’m proud of, but outside of that, AITA for hitting down the line or towards the net player? For us, hitting a dipping topspin shot when he hugged the net was either hitting into the net or short enough that my partner could hit a putaway. So, I was going by the Michael Chang rule of: keep going for the same shot until they course correct. My goal was to keep on forcing those errors or at least have him back off the net for easy putaways. At no point did I tag him, and the closest was about a foot towards his backhand side and framed to go out. To be generous to him, I was hitting the ball quite well today and enough to be able to target dipping topspin shots. However, even assuming that I was hitting close to his body, it’s men’s doubles in a 4.0 clinic. Further, AIO (Am I Overreacting) for pushing the fact that he should apologize for returning balls when we aren’t looking? Granted, getting hit in the nuts was probably the trigger for it all, but it really just sent me to see a shrug instead of an apology.

I will admit, there is some history here. For whatever reason, this player has been quite rude to me for months. Honestly, I’m kind of a “mayor” type on the court, wanting to be friendly with everyone, and I generally get along with most people in clinics, including this one. But I have noticed things like constant eye rolls when we are paired together or when I’m working through something new the coach is teaching (e.g., swing volleys have been an arduous journey). Still, after attempts to be friendly, I just decided that I didn’t want to waste energy figuring out why this individual had such outward rudeness towards me. I’ve been able to brush these little minor acts of rudeness or grumpiness, but I have been annoyed by the constant returning balls at my back. I walk back to my serve position with my back to the net, and it’s just constant balls hit at my back when I’m not looking. I’ve asked him to wait, but of course it definitely gets in my head knowing that it’s clear he has some unknowable issue with me. I guess today, I was pretty over it when the ball hits my gonads.

So, there have been some back and forth on some posts on the differential of strictly applying the rules v. being somewhat more lax, and recently, a friend of mine at a tournament stopped a point when the opponent made an exclamation during the point. The Code for unofficiated matches notes that players shouldn’t talk at all during a singles point, but after discussing with my close network during a clinic, I was pretty surprised that my group was split between rarely or never calling it v. calling it fairly often, about 60/40 respectively. Given this disparity, I am posting another tennis etiquette poll to gauge the following:
How often, if at all, are recreational players in an official match calling hindrances for opponents talking during a singles point? This assumes that any player calling the hindrance has appropriately stopped the point in time (e.g., does not make a play on the ball well after the opponent speaks).

For context, my friend had only started calling hindrances after numerous instances of the opponent screaming actual words at himself after different shots, usually a berating himself for a perceived error. After asking him to tone it down and repeated yelling actual words during the point, my friend just went ahead and started grabbing the ball and stopping the point as soon as it happened. I thought it was pretty reasonable as it was just so distracting, but when my buddies had a friendly discussion on the matter, it was a mixed bag where: (a) a few of them were adamant that they never do it, (b) some noted that it was only if it was continued, egregious, and/or actually distracting (e.g., sounding like an “out” call or a “not up” call), and (c) finally the remainder who said that they always call it after a warning. Now, in friendlies, people are chatting and exclaiming mid-point all the time (such as “oh good one” or “ugh, so bad”), but in official matches, the Code is pretty clear that “Singles players should not talk during points” (Part 3, Rule 34).

Feel free to provide your views in the poll and your rationale in the comments. Really interested in seeing how this one turns out. More similar polls will follow on strict application of rules v. judgment calls in official matches.

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Hoping for some feedback from anyone who has used both the A5 Gray and Infrared strings from Toroline.

I’ve fallen in love with the Toroline A5 for my tournament and match string—mainly for its surprisingly good spin production for a round string, its durability, and its predictability. I have been defaulting to the A5 Gray (125) reel I have and stringing at 47-48 lbs. I picked up 5 sets of the A5 Infrared and strung it at my usual tension, and it was just so launchy and unpredictable at that tension. Has anyone had a similar experience with the stark performance difference between the two strings?

I would not have expected the .05 difference in gauges to make such a stark difference. I already went up from 45 lbs. to 47 lbs. to compensate for the added power of the Vcore 98 (v8), and I would hate to get close to 50 lbs.

So, this may be a bit random, but I’m hoping the ballet community can help. As a tennis player who likes to grind out long points, I have lost a couple of toenails from the intensity of the direction changes. Throughout the years, friends with ballet backgrounds and multi-genre dancers always say that ballet dancers are the most metal of artists. No one deals with physical pain like them—in particular, the frequency of bloody toes and ripped off toenails. I have a couple that ripped off from the rigors of tennis, and I haven’t gotten very good help from the tennis community and tennis-related sub-Reddits (generally, suggestions that I need to find better fitting shoes).

So my ask is **how do ballet dancers treat their ripped off toenails**? Right now, I am trying to let the fully missing toenails grow back, but they never seem to grow back correctly, and they are prone to just rip off again quite easily. **Are there any secrets from the ballet world on how to mitigate future ripped toenails and on how they can be treated or taped to let the toenail grow back properly?** I am hoping that I don’t have to just give up on having nails on my third and fourth toe on my right foot.

In case helpful, tennis is pretty gnarly on the toes, as it involves some intense change of direction and moving forward. Thus, if there is too much room in a shoe, you can really jam your toenail into the toebox. If you have too tight a fit, then it could pull up constantly on your toenails. For me, it took me awhile to find the right width (generally requiring a special wide version of the shoe) and toebox shape to mitigate how much my toenails were bruising and/or tearing off my toenails. But even so, ever since the toenails pulled up from their nailbeds, it never really heals properly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.