SOMETIMES SURFING THE WEB PAYS OFF

By Charles E. Vasoll

In the process of researching the article entitled “Let’s Visit Some Web Sites”, I just found a reply from Bob Calloway to an article that I wrote for the May 2003 issue of “Platform Tennis Magazine”. The article was titled “Too, Too Long” and referred to the length of time that it takes to decide championship platform tennis matches. (It is reprinted in this issue for your reference - click here to see article) Calloway’s response also covered the reply to my column by Wayne Dollard in the same issue. Dollard defended the current time of play in his column “No, Just Right”.

“ Making Platform Tennis More Interesting” is the title of Calloway’s remarks and the full text can be found on the paddlepro.com web site. (I don’t understand the date 09-05-2002 at the top of the article and my last name is spelled incorrectly, however I am sure Bob has had this trouble with his last name also.) It makes good reading and I recommend that you look it up.

Briefly, he believes that the points can be made shorter if the players are willing to learn a few new techniques for “kill shots” and be more “risk taking” to win a point. He agrees that a shorter match will be more attractive to the spectators, but he also points out that the players will benefit by using less energy when they move to their next match. He does not like the solutions that I offered – no-ad scoring, fewer games to a set, a time clock, change of scoring, or a less lively ball.

He opines that “The top players are so good today that length of matches is definitely a problem. I recall listening to a conversation among several top tournament players” he continues, “who agreed that one could tell with reasonable certainty who would win the quarterfinal matches by looking at the draw for the first two rounds. If a top team had a draw in which they were going to have to play a tough match…their chances in the quarters would be severely affected.” Now please remember, we are addressing National Championship competitions, not a Saturday afternoon pick-up match.

Calloway sums it up by stating that players need to learn to “think outside the box” and become more creative in their approach to the game. “This is the direction the game should be taking rather than changing the rules or accepting the fact that platform tennis is not an exciting sport to watch.”

I like the approach Bob Calloway takes but I am not sure that we still don’t have to “tinker” with the scoring procedure in some way to reach the goal that we both agree needs to achieved.

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