This question is for competitive and non-competitive tennis players, and non-players as well: Do you think you could score a point against a randomly chosen player at the US Open? Not even win a game…just score a point.
And this randomly-chosen player could be a top seed or a bottom seed, a man or a woman, there’s no telling who you might draw. Just imagine you woke up today and found yourself in penciled in at the US Open scheduled to play _______. Would you get skunked?
As a follow-up: Would it matter which player you drew? Do you think you could score a point against a lower seed, even if you couldn’t against, say, Federer?
When answering, please indicate your skill level.
To answer my own question: No, I couldn’t. I haven’t held a tennis racquet in 20 years.
Even the top players miss sometimes, so it’s not impossible. But to return a serve at 100-plus mph I’d need a lot of luck, and with the amount of torque these guys put on their shots… one point in a set, maybe a handful, I think is conceivable. I haven’t played regularly in a while but I’m hoping to get started again.
I think with a bit of practice I might be able to do it. I haven’t played tennis in ages but whenever I did play I picked up pretty fast.
100+ mph serves don’t actually frighten me; I was always more comfortable somehow facing a 90-mph bowling or pitching machine than a slower delivery. When it’s that fast you don’t have time to think about it, you just react. Of course, if I were 15 years younger my reaction times would be better, and I’d have a better shot at it.
Only if my opponent double-faulted. Scoring on my serve is out of the question. Returning his serve is highly unlikely, and if so would be a return lob of some sort.
Recreational player here, but haven’t played in at least a year.
I could definitely score a point, though I am not a very good tennis player. The thing is, though, playing against someone who is not at all in your league is actually quite challenging in some ways for the superior player. Sure, they would ace me 80% of the time, and easily put away my lucky returns another 10% of the time. But every once in a while I would get a ball back into play and it would be much softer than they are used to, probably much shorter than they are used to, and that’s hard to handle. Also, my second serve is so soft and ridiculous they would be out of position and probably overhitting it a lot before they got used to how lame it is. I bet I could take anywhere from 4-8 points over the course of three sets from anyone on the tour.
It depends on if they were able to suss out how inferior you were to begin with; in my case, they’d take one look and know that they could serve to the middle of the box and still blow it by me every time.
Anyone interested in this question might enjoy an Esquire article about tennis by David Foster Wallace. The article is called The String Theory. It’s pretty long, and foot-noted, and is vintage Wallace, which to me is a good thing. He’s covering the 1995 Canadian Open, in particular a player named Michael Joyce, who at the time was ranked 79th in the world. Wallace played serious competitive tennis as a teen, and arrived at the tournament envisioning himself as capable of playing credibly against professionals. He decided that he would get his butt kicked by the worst pros at the tournament, but that even hitting the ball around with Michael Joyce would be “in a certain way obscene”.
While the article doesn’t directly attempt to answer the question in the OP, I thought some of those interested in the subject might enjoy it.
Michael Joyce is now Maria Sharapova’s coach, by the way.
Around this time of year I usually remember that I played in the US Open juniors one time, or at least at a junior tournament played at the national tennis center around that time. I got my butt kicked by a larger guy who did serve very hard. Not that they had radar guns but he was over 100 mph, I am sure. I never got to that level. Returning the serve was a huge struggle and I couldn’t do it consistently. I think I got to break point on his serve once. I did manage to hold one time, so he beat me 6-0 and 6-1.
No, and nobody on this board could except for a double fault before the opponent figured out he didn’t have to go all out.
How many tackles could you get in the NFL? How many shots on net in an NHL/pro soccer game? How many head shots in boxing?How many hits in MLB? How many points in the NBA (this one I could actually see due to the ability to throw in long shots before any defense is applied, but maybe that’d change after the first trip up the court)?
It happens fairly often on the internet that people think, or at least say, that if they quit everything, trained relentlessly for a year or ten, then they could compete on some level with elite athletes. That’s just horribly far off the mark.
I’m pretty sure I could get a point or two, although I’d be really intimidated.
I once played an opponent in high school who quickly went on to greater glory, and I did not beat her, but I got the second set. Mostly because during the first set I learned how to return her serves, from the experience of playing tennis with guys, and playing her in the first set elevated my game.
I would have this advantage: Serena would see this old lady hobbling out onto the court and be laughing too hard to work up any heat in her game!
PS–I would never be able to tackle anyone, I would never be able to get even one hit in Little League, never mind MLB, probably zero points in the NBA. But tennis is my game and I could do it. I’ll also bet I could beat anyone on this board in ping-pong.
I think it’s debatable how much those compare to an individual point in tennis. It’s a given that I’m not going to tackle an NFL running back who is six or eight inches taller than me, heavier and much more muscular, or that I’m not going to post up or guard a pro basketball player who is a foot taller than me and is much quicker while outweighing me by 100 pounds. A set in tennis is 24 points. That’s 12 serves your opponent has to make and 12 you have to make. Each point ends with either a shot your opponent hits past you or one that he misses or you miss. They’re individual events.
I’ll grant that people are loath to admit they’re incapable of even staying on the court with these guys - and that unless you’re up close or hitting with them it’s hard to grasp just how hard they hit, and how much you feel it if you get your racquet on one of their shots and don’t return it cleanly. Tennis is more physical than people realize.
Fantastic article, thank you very much for the cite. I’d heard of David Foster Wallace before, but never read any of his stuff. The footnotes are a bit hard to get used to–even as a big Pterry fan—but I’m now looking forward to going to the library and picking up some of his stuff.
Oh, and for the OP, no way for me, and I’m betting no way for most of you, unless you were really good, top H.S. level players, and have kept up. I don’t play tennis, but I play golf and I’ve watched PGA pros do their thing. I simply can’t do what they do: I can’t hit the ball as far, as accurately, or putt as well as they do (we won’t even talk about my sand or rough game). I can’t see even performing one single golf shot better than a professional. And winning one hole off of a professional is a complete fantasy, even assuming my game got a whole lot better.
Perhaps a more apt comparison is beating a PGA tour pro on one hole? I don’t think that’s quite the same either since you’re not physically working against somebody.
The main point is that many people vastly overrate themselves, underrate professional athletes, or both. I think we’re in agreement there.
I remember one of the earlier seasons of The Apprentice. They had Anna Kournikova as a guest for some reason or other. A female tennis pro who at the time wasn’t even ranked.
She challenged the men (many who did play tennis) to return just one of her serves. Not even score a point, just return a serve back over the net. I think she agreed to kiss any guy that could do it. Not a single one could. Hardly any of them could even make contact with their racket and the ones that did had the ball deflect on various angles out of bounds.
