In no other sporting event is the home court advantage more significant, primarily because the hosts choose the surface. U.S. Captain Patrick McEnroe chose a Baltimore company to construct a portable cushioned-hard court to his players' liking, The Miami Herald reports. Last year, the Russians beat the U.S. on red clay in Moscow, but today they'll toe the lines on a Maryland-made fast court that was shipped in last week.
Viewers today should also plan on watching that digitized image of the ball flying down and hitting (or missing) the lines again and again. Unlike Grand Slams where players have two challenges per set, this weekend will have unlimited challenges -- why not get a second opinion if the call doesn't goes your way? McEnroe is against it but could not sway the International Tennis Federation who calls the shots.
About Me
- Joe Samuel Starnes
- Joe Samuel “Sam” Starnes was born in Alabama, grew up in Cedartown, Georgia, and has lived in either New Jersey or Philadelphia since 2000. Red Dirt: A Tennis Novel is his third novel. His first novel, Calling, was published in 2005, and was reissued in 2014 as an e-book by Mysterious Press.com/Open Road. NewSouth Books published his novel Fall Line in November 2011, and it was selected to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Best of the South” list. He has had journalism appear in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and various magazines, as well as essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, an MA in English from Rutgers University in Newark, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. He was awarded a fellowship to the 2006 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He works in the administration at Widener University and has taught writing courses at Widener, Rowan University, and Saint Joseph’s University.