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Table tennis players need to have tactical awareness, that is, to choose the most appropriate tactical strategy to deal with the opponent's situation and the game situation. But in practice, many athletes tend to neglect the training of tactical awareness, resulting in a disconnect between training and competition. In order to solve this problem, this paper introduces a spatial dynamic image planning method based on wearable optoelectronic devices, and applies it to the tactical simulation of table tennis match. By analyzing the characteristics and demands of table tennis competition, an optical sensing system is designed and integrated into wearable devices. The system uses optical sensors to capture the position and movement trajectory of ping-pong balls in real time, and carries out real-time image processing and analysis based on this information. In the process of tactical simulation, the system can predict the opponent's tactical intention according to the position and trajectory of the ping-pong ball, and give corresponding coping strategies. The experimental results show that the system achieves good results in both accuracy and real-time performance. The application of tactical optimization model in table tennis competition will help to improve the competitive level of athletes and promote the development of table tennis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To become an elite table tennis player, aside from continually practicing, players must know their strengths and weaknesses to plan their strategy beforehand and increase their winning rate. The main problems with previous research were that the data collected were incomplete and imprecise. To address these problems, we established "The Intellectual Tactical System in Competitive Table Tennis", using video analysis to collect competitive data. Additionally, we proposed a machine learning method using a combination of feature-selection and association rules to discover interesting rules from the data. The international matches of the Taiwanese table tennis single player Yun-Ju Lin were used as research samples by applying 3 S (speed, spin, spot) theory to collect and analyze data. The critical factors and scenarios were analyzed to identify the winning tactical models. The results of this study may provide useful suggestions for Yun-Ju Lin on training and building tactics in competitions. The similar approach may be essential for elite players and coaches to have appropriate tactical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we tested the theory of angles that was proposed almost a century ago by the tennis player Henri Cochet. This theory proposes that expert tennis players should position themselves on the bisector of the angle of the opponent's possibilities in order to optimize shot return, suggesting a geometric occupation of the court relative to the opponent's affordances; namely what he/she is capable of doing. We tested this hypothesis by analysing player and ball positioning data from professional tennis matches recorded with a Hawk-Eye system. We compared this hypothesis with two alternative computational and probabilistic hypotheses which would consist in positioning oneself on the average or the median of the shots usually played from a given location. The results show that expert tennis players apply the principles of the theory of angles and thus confirm Henri Cochet's intuition. That is, for lateral court positioning, a geometric strategy is deemed optimal by expert players. It also appears that the more experienced the players are, the more precise their application of this strategy becomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to propose a table tennis target detection (TD) method based on deep learning (DL) and multi-scale feature fusion (MFF) to improve the detection accuracy of the ball in table tennis competition, optimize the training process of athletes, and improve the technical level. In this paper, DL technology is used to improve the accuracy of table tennis TD through MFF guidance. Initially, based on the FAST Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (FAST R-CNN), the TD is carried out in the table tennis match. Then, through the method of MFF guidance, different levels of feature information are fused, which improves the accuracy of TD. Through the experimental verification on the test set, it is found that the mean Average Precision (mAP) value of the target detection algorithm (TDA) proposed here reaches 87.3%, which is obviously superior to other TDAs and has higher robustness. The DL TDA combined with the proposed MFF can be applied to various detection fields and can help the application of TD in real life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the large number of frames and low video resolution, tennis match videos cannot accurately identify and extract effective data, which reduces the level of fine analysis of tennis matches. In order to solve the problem of poor detection effect of small targets in tennis video, an automatic detection method of small targets in tennis video based on deep learning is proposed. Non-maximum suppression algorithm is used to determine the position of the target between different adjacent video image sequences, and SVM classifier is used to train a large number of target behaviors. According to the hierarchical structure of dataset annotation, the hierarchical structure of tennis video for deep learning is optimized. The reconstruction algorithm is used to enhance the video image in the input VOC data set and improve the fine segmentation effect of the image. The difference video image is binarized to complete the automatic detection of small targets in tennis video. The experimental results show that the proposed method has high integrity of tennis video information collection, high recognition accuracy and short detection time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relative age effect (RAE) has been the subject of many studies, but no relevant literature has discussed the phenomenon of RAE in Chinese tennis. Numerous studies have demonstrated that RAE significantly contributes to brain drain and other occurrences that create inequity. This paper analyzes the birth dates and year-end rankings of all male players (N = 2697) who participated in China's junior tennis tournaments (U12, U14, U16) between 2014 and 2019 and who were selected for China's National Junior Team in 2019 and 2020; the paper classifies the birth dates into quarters and semesters. One of the research objectives of this study is to analyze whether RAE exists in Chinese junior men's tennis and whether RAE exerts an effect on athletes' performance. Differences between the observed and expected birthdate distributions were tested using chi-square statistics, and subsequent calculations were tested using odds ratios. The study found that RAE was present in all Chinese junior male tennis sports groups (p<0.001). The percentages of athletes born in the first half of the year were 56.4% (U12), 60.4% (U14), and 60.4% (U16), and the percentages of those born in the first quarter were 34.1% (U12), 36.4% (U14), and 37.1% (U16). Athletes with birth dates closer to the beginning of the year had a higher probability of achieving excellent athletic performance as a result of RAE, whereas those who were born near the end of the year had a more difficult time achieving strong athletic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A player's purpose in playing a game is their reason for playing the game in the first place (5-11). From inside the game, successful pure striving players should be playing as if the end of winning this game just was their purpose; that is, as if they were pure achievement players. What distinguishes achievement players from striving players is their motivational orientation toward this goal, what Nguyen stipulates as their I purpose i in playing the game. Keywords: Games; achievement play; striving play; Suits; virtue; ethics; aesthetics EN Games achievement play striving play Suits virtue ethics aesthetics 369 379 11 12/22/21 20211101 NES 211101 In his groundbreaking and fantastic new book, I Games: Agency as Art i , C. Thi Nguyen asks us to see gameplay, and hence the "humorous, the playful, and the ridiculous" ([1], 42), as an important sphere of life that can, under appropriate conditions, develop our capacity as agents. [Extracted from the article]

The history of campaigns against apartheid through sport reveals messy relationships between athletes and social movements, advancing recent debates over the possibilities and constraints of sport politics. The anti-apartheid movement coalesced around a transnational sporting boycott to isolate South Africa, but the American tennis icon Arthur Ashe made a series of visits to compete there in the 1970s. Ashe believed in participation as the primary mechanism for change through sport, only later embracing the boycott. When tennis tournaments and rugby tours brought South Africans to the United States, anti-apartheid organizations mobilized their own confrontational protests to interrupt play. As the growing movement won over athletes and South African propaganda turned toward commercial sport spectacle, the special position that athletes occupied provided leverage. However, their magnified legacy also obscured how resistance to apartheid through sport found success in the first place. Despite the appeal of participation as the natural path of progress, strategies of confrontation often proved more effective in the struggle against apartheid. Questioning the politics of participation and widening the frame to consider confrontation changes our understanding of sport politics, looking beyond individual athletes and bringing everyday people off the sidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopts a new approach, SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP), to diagnose the table tennis matches based on a hybrid algorithm, namely Long Short-Term Memory–Back Propagation Neural Network (LSTM–BPNN). 100 male singles competitions (8535 rallies) from 2019 to 2022 are analyzed by a hybrid technical–tactical analysis theory, which hybridizes the double three-phase and four-phase evaluation theories. A k-means cluster analysis is conducted to classify 59 players' winning rates into three levels (high, medium, and low). The results show that LSTM–BPNN has excellent performance (MSE = 0.000355, MAE = 0.014237, RMSE = 0.018853, and R 2 = 0.988311) compared with six typical artificial intelligence algorithms. Using LSTM–BPNN to calculate the SHAP value of each feature, the global results find that the receive-attack and serve-attack phases of the ending match have essential impacts on the mutual winning probabilities. Finally, case applications show that the SHAP can directly obtain each feature importance on one or more matches, which is more objective and reliable than the traditional simulation method. This research explores an innovative way to understand and analyze matches, and these results have implications for the performance analysis of table tennis and related racket sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this explorative study was to determine the key inertial measurement unit-based wheelchair mobility performance components during a wheelchair tennis match. A total of 64 wheelchair tennis matches were played by 15 wheelchair tennis players (6 women, 5 men, 4 juniors). All individual tennis wheelchairs were instrumented with inertial measurement units, two on the axes of the wheels and one on the frame. A total of 48 potentially relevant wheelchair tennis outcome variables were initially extracted from the sensor signals, based on previous wheelchair sports research and the input of wheelchair tennis experts (coaches, embedded scientists). A principal component analysis was used to reduce this set of variables to the most relevant outcomes for wheelchair tennis mobility. Results showed that wheelchair mobility performance in wheelchair tennis can be described by six components: rotations to racket side in (1) curves and (2) turns; (3) linear accelerations; (4) rotations to non-racket side in (4) turns and (5) curves; and finally, (6) linear velocities. One or two outcome variables per component were selected to allow an easier interpretation of results. These key outcome variables can be used to adequately describe the wheelchair mobility performance aspect of wheelchair tennis during a wheelchair tennis match and can be monitored during training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1973 Battle of the Sexes tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs provides an example of what I call "sport spectacle." I define "sport spectacle" as a staged encounter in which the institutions of sports and media conjoin with the activities of individual athletes and the gaze of interested audiences to co-produce narratives in which athletic endeavors reflect, shape, or intervene upon social will in material and symbolic ways. Sport spectacle involves a contested co-production of meaning about a sporting event's social importance that occurs before, during, and—through the rhetorical processes of public memory—after the sporting event. I analyze how King and Riggs understood the match within women's movement discourse and the cultural evolution of tennis, in addition to how King and others have treated the match as a cultural touchstone that can be redeployed in public memory. Recent films When Billie Beat Bobby (2001) and The Battle of the Sexes (2017) offer very different characterizations of King's role as a social movement actor and the Battle of the Sexes as a social movement act. While When Billie Beat Bobby credits King with wide-ranging transformation of women's lives in a universe largely devoid of political context, The Battle of the Sexes anachronistically champions [End Page 97] King as a closeted LGBTQ+ icon with a more nuanced understanding of sport spectacle as a transformational gathering that prepares spectators for political contestation. This case study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that attends to the nuanced rhetorical dimensions and political contexts of spectacle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of statistical tools for predicting the winner in tennis matches has enjoyed an increase in popularity over the last two decades and, currently, a variety of methods are available. In particular, paired comparison approaches make use of latent ability estimates or rating calculations to determine the probability that a player will win a match. In this paper, we extend this latter class of models by using network indicators for the predictions. We propose a measure based on eigenvector centrality. Unlike what happens for the standard paired comparisons class (where the rates or latent abilities only change at time t for those players involved in the matches at time t), the use of a centrality measure allows the ratings of the whole set of players to vary every time there is a new match. The resulting ratings are then used as a covariate in a simple logit model. Evaluating the proposed approach with respect to some popular competing specifications, we find that the centrality-based approach largely and consistently outperforms all the alternative models considered in terms of the prediction accuracy. Finally, the proposed method also achieves positive betting results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anticipation skill is important for elite racquet sports players. Successful anticipation allows them to predict the actions of the opponent better and take early actions in matches. Existing studies of anticipation behaviors, largely based on the analysis of in‐lab behaviors, failed to capture the characteristics of in‐situ anticipation behaviors in real matches. This research proposes a data‐driven approach for research on anticipation behaviors to gain more accurate and reliable insight into anticipation skills. Collaborating with domain experts in table tennis, we develop a complete solution that includes data collection, the development of a model to evaluate anticipation behaviors, and the design of a visual analytics system called Tac‐Anticipator. Our case study reveals the strengths and weaknesses of top table tennis players' anticipation behaviors. In a word, our work enriches the research methods and guidelines for visual analytics of anticipation behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the four decades straddling the turn of the nineteenth century, the small Ontario town of Niagara-on-the-Lake experienced marked growth in its tourism industry. Catering predominantly to wealthy upper-middle-class Canadian and American visitors, the lake-side settlement offered numerous opportunities for polite recreation. Chief among them was lawn tennis, a sport that sat somewhat outside of the mainstream in terms of its high-class, mixed-sex participation demographic. While its players were imbued with a strong amateur philosophy, local boosters recognized the sport's potential to generate tourism income through its two tournaments, but this hinged on the outward presentation among its players/guests of refined gentility—a reflection of both class and gender—both on and off the court. This article considers how lawn tennis tournaments fit into the town's burgeoning tourism industry, and examines gender relations—particularly the role of women—in relation to this development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: The precompetitive anxiety should be controlled in athletes to optimize their performance. In this regard, heart rate variability (HRV) is a non-invasive tool to assess the autonomic nervous system balance. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the HRV response of elite international junior tennis players during an international tournament. Eleven players participate in this study, with a mean age of 15.36 (0.67) years old. The HRV of tennis players are assessed 24 h before the event, and immediately before the first and the second match of the ITF Junior Davis Cup event. Each of the registers lasted 5 min and the time domain, frequency domain, and non-linear variables were extracted. Results show that elite tennis players did not decrease the HRV between the baseline and the first match. However, the HRV response significantly differed between the baseline and the second match. Nevertheless, anxiety was higher before the first match than before the second match. Coaches and physical trainers could use HRV to control and manage the precompetitive anxiety of junior tennis players. The experience in international tournaments and the familiarization with the environment in the second match could explain these results. The aim of the present study was to investigate the evolution of the HRV during an international team tennis tournament in elite junior tennis players. A total of 11 tennis players, with a mean age of 15.36 (0.67) from six nationalities, participated in this cross-sectional study. Participants were measured one day before the event, before the first match, and before the second match of the ITF Junior Davis Cup event. Each of the registers lasted 5 min and the time domain, frequency domain and non-linear variables were extracted. The tournament took place in Valencia (Spain). Results showed that there was not a significant decrease in the heart rate variability (HRV) induced by precompetitive stress. However, significant differences (p-value < 0.05) were found between baseline and second match pre-competition HRV values in low frequency (LFNu) (p-value = 0.008) and high frequency (HFNu) power (p-value = 0.008), LF/HF ratio (p-value = 0.008) and Sample Entropy (SampEn) (p-value = 0.033) variables. Furthermore, cognitive anxiety (measured by CSAI-2r) (p-value = 0.017) and anxiety (measured by STAI-S) (p-value = 0.042) were higher before the first match than before the second match. Coaches and physical trainers could use HRV to control and manage the precompetitive anxiety of junior tennis players. The experience in international tournaments and the familiarization with the environment in the second match could explain these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of voice coil motors, it has also been widely used in today's sports competitions. For example, the Hawk-Eye system in tennis matches uses voice coil motors to focus on the camera to capture the trajectory of the tennis ball. Therefore, in order to better solve the problem of dynamic parameter uncertainty, external load disturbance, and tracking control of the voice coil motor servo system in motion, this paper proposes for the first time the strategy of using L1 adaptive control algorithm to control the voice coil motor servo system. First, it briefly analyzes the working principle and control method of the voice coil motor, and then constructs the uncertain parameter model according to the mathematical model of the voice coil motor. The closed-loop system of voice coil motor is simulated and analyzed by L1 adaptive controller. The results show that the L1 adaptive control method effectively suppresses the high-frequency interference caused by the voice coil motor in operation, can control the tracking error to gradually converge and so the tracking effect is better, and has strong robustness to the perturbation of system parameters. It can be applied to voice coil motor servo control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional tennis tournaments have onsite sports medicine physicians who oversee the athletes' overall health during competition, including musculoskeletal injury and general illnesses. The medical team is composed of orthopedic and non-operative sports medicine physicians. Frequently, the tournament doctors require imaging to localize and grade musculoskeletal injuries and to make decisions regarding treatment, safe training, and return to match play. The most versatile and readily available imaging modality to evaluate for acute musculoskeletal injury is point-of-care ultrasonography. In 2015, a dedicated radiology service was created at the US Open by bringing in a musculoskeletal radiologist who would perform ultrasounds in a formal and consistent manner. In addition, the radiologist was tasked with onsite radiography as well as review of all MRI examinations done at the imaging center. This article describes how this radiology service was implemented, what types of studies were performed and the advantages of having an onsite musculoskeletal radiologist at the tournament. This service allowed the medical team to provide the comprehensive and efficient medical care required in a major professional tennis event. It also showed the value of having the in-person expertise of the musculoskeletal radiologist in the sports medicine team. This same model could be applied to other professional sporting events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why is Roger Federer a GOAT (‘Greatest of All Time’) of tennis? I argue that the correct response goes beyond statistics and style of play; instead, it is due to the fact that Federer embodies the qualities that typify sporting genius. More than merely being a developed or refined form of expertise, sporting genius relies on the notion of performative fit; that is, the capacity to express viable ways of succeeding within a given sport in virtue of one’s cultivated history of biological and socio-cultural existence. In other words, a genius such as Federer perfectly fits the requirements of his sport and, moreover, is able to safeguard and shape this fit through his unique disposition to perform in certain ways. Performative fit provides the foundations for received traits of genius such as creativity, self-belief and risk-taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Single-elimination (knockout) tournaments are the standard paradigm for both main tennis professional associations, WTA and ATP. Schedules are generated by allocating first seeded and then unseeded players with seeds prevented from encountering each other early in the competition. Besides, the distribution of pairings in the first round between unseeded players and seeds for a yearly season may be strongly unbalanced. This provides often a great disadvantage to some "unlucky" unseeded players in terms of money prizes. Also, a fair distribution of matches during a season would benefit from limiting in first rounds the presence of Head-to-Head (H2H) matches between players that met in the recent past. We propose a tournament generation approach in order to reduce in the first round unlucky pairings and also replays of H2H matches. The approach consists in a clustering optimization problem inducing a consequent draw within each cluster. A Non-Linear Mathematical Programming (NLMP) model is proposed for the clustering problem so as to reach a fair schedule. The solution reached by a commercial NLMP solver on the model is compared to the one reached by a faster hybrid algorithm based on multi-start local search. The approach is successfully tested on historical records from the recent Grand Slams tournaments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topspin is one of the most widely used hitting techniques in a tennis match and it is an effective tool to win over the opponent. Hence, flight path simulation of a spinning ball can be a tremendous analysis tool to help tennis players perfect their game. This article proposes a fuzzy logic model based on the principles of kinematics and mechanics. This study analyzes the physical characteristics of a spinning ball during the flight process, which are divided into two categories: the characteristics of the ball on impact (including the floating and rotating it causes) and the landing rebound characteristics. These two characteristics are considered as the constraints of the flight path simulation and the inputs of the fuzzy logic model. Fuzzy logic is used to fuzzify the impact and landing rebound information of the ball based on the knowledge base, solve the problem, and finally defuzzify the results into crisp outputs, that is, accurate flight trajectory. The simulation results show that the estimation error of the proposed model is lower than 3.7 cm/s and 0.9°, and the success rate of accurate topspin execution is 100%, indicating that the proposed model is effective to train tennis players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anglo-American relations in tennis are a fascinating subject, particularly in the period of the late-19th/early-20th century, during which on- and off-court developments reflected and indicated broader societal shifts, as the US gradually replaced Britain as the world's leading industrialized nation. This paper aims to discuss how Anglo-American relations in lawn tennis shifted throughout this period, from when lawn tennis was "invented" in Britain to the onset of the Great War, and to contextualize these developments in the light of shifting broader cultural relations more generally between both nations, alongside developments within sport and tennis more specifically. The following aspects are examined: attitudes toward the relative standards of both American and British players from correspondents of both nations in terms of their overall rank and possibilities of success; and, attitudes from tennis officials toward the formal organization of competitions between players of both nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors studied gaze behaviors in high- and intermediate-skill tennis players while they performed tennis serve returns. Participants returned 40 serves in 4 serve locations while wearing a mobile eye tracker. The ball's flight path was deconstructed into 3 distinct locations (i.e., ball before bouncing on surface, the bounce area, and ball after bouncing on surface), and gaze behaviors along with quiet-eye (QE) onset and durations were recorded. Results revealed that (a) high-skill players exhibited better return shots than their lower skill counterparts, (b) high-skill players and high-score shots were characterized by longer fixation durations on the ball at prebounce, and (c) longer QE durations were observed for high-skill players and high-score shots. Findings provide valuable insight into the relationship between gaze behaviors, QE, and performance in fast-pace interceptive sports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to present the use of a previously validated wearable sensor device, Armbeep, in a real-life application, to enhance a tennis player's training by monitoring and analysis of the time, physiological, movement, and tennis-specific workload and recovery indicators, based on fused sensor data acquired by the wearable sensor—a miniature wearable sensor device, designed to be worn on a wrist, that can detect and record movement and biometric information, where the basic signal processing is performed directly on the device, while the more complex signal analysis is performed in the cloud. The inertial measurements and pulse-rate detection of the wearable device were validated previously, showing acceptability for monitoring workload and recovery during tennis practice and matches. This study is one of the first attempts to monitor the daily workload and recovery of tennis players under real conditions. Based on these data, we can instruct the coach and the player to adjust the daily workload. This optimizes the level of an athlete's training load, increases the effectiveness of training, enables an individual approach, and reduces the possibility of overuse or injuries. This study is a practical example of the use of modern technology in the return of injured athletes to normal training and competition. This information will help tennis coaches and players to objectify their workloads during training and competitions, as this is usually only an intuitive assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study was to explore the service round technical-tactical performance indicators of three phases discriminating the match result and the two match forms. The statistics of 72 professional men's singles matches of the 2018 international competitions were collected. A chi-square test was used to assess the relationship between match form, match outcome and service round result. Afterwards, a two-way ANOVA was performed to evaluate the effect of match form (SHM: match between players of the same handedness and OHM: match between players of the opposite handedness) and match result on three evaluation indices of thirteen technical-tactical indicators. The results displayed that: (1) there was a weak relationship between the service round outcome and match form for both the winning and losing players (p<0.001, ES=0.12); (2) the winners outperformed the defeated players by a higher technical effectiveness in all three phases with small to moderate effects (p<0.05, ES:0.50-1.00) at both match forms; (3) the usage rate of performance indicators of the first four strokes phase and six strokes above phase distinguished the SHM matches from the OHM matches by small to large effects (p<0.05, ES:0.50-1.26). This study offers insights for practitioners to comprehend the technical-tactical aspects that are deciding for performance when competing against different types of opponents and to make effective training plans and match strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tennis is a popular sport, and professional tennis matches are probably the most watched games globally. Many studies consider statistical or machine learning models to predict the results of professional tennis matches. In this study, we propose a statistical approach for predicting the match outcomes of Grand Slam tournaments, in addition to applying exploratory data analysis (EDA) to explore variables related to match results. The proposed approach introduces new variables via the Glicko rating model, a Bayesian method commonly used in professional chess. We use EDA tools to determine important variables and apply classification models (e.g., logistic regression, support vector machine, neural network and light gradient boosting machine) to evaluate the classification results through cross-validation. The empirical study is based on men's and women's single matches of Grand Slam tournaments (2000–2019). Our analysis results show that professional tennis ranking is the most important variable and that the accuracy of the proposed Glicko model is slightly higher than that of other models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, posted a statement on the social media site Weibo accusing China's former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her, referring to a years-long, on-again, off-again relationship. Topics include withdrawal of Peng from tournaments by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), WTA's concerns about her well-being and ability to communicate without censorship or coercion, and #MeToo movement, which has managed to gain momentum in spite of an intensifying government crackdown on feminist activism and social media accounts.

Forecasting has been playing an important role in different fields of life, i.e., in decision-making activities of management, to predict uncertain events within an organization, in weather forecasting, in flood forecasting, etc. Stakeholders involved in betting market take advantage of tennis forecasting directly or indirectly. Winning probability calculated using forecasting models helps the bettors in deciding whether to place a bet or not. Keeping in view the importance of tennis forecasting, the Bradley-Terry model is used to model men's professional tennis for predicting match outcomes in tennis matches of men's singles. Model coefficients are estimated using data from January 2019 to September 2020 of 3439 matches. Ratings for each player are calculated using model coefficients. Player rankings are then calculated using these ratings. Comparison of model rankings with ATP rankings has shown satisfactory results. Winning probability for each player is calculated using model coefficients and ratings. These probability predictions are evaluated against four measures of performance. The results reveal that surface on which a game is played on contributes significantly towards a player's performance. Due to this impact of the surface, our model has produced superior player rankings for certain players who had been ranked very low in official ATP rankings. According to most of the performance measures, the model has shown good results for clay court data which are closely followed by hard court data. To calculate return on investment, model results are compared with the bookmakers' average odds and best available odds. It has been found that return on investment for a fitted model is highest in the case of clay court data in comparison to bookmaker's average odds and best odds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As we will see, skill and luck are not incompatible in the way that undermine an epistemic probability account of luck, but the compossibility of the two still threatens the view. Hitting a game-winning hit to win a championship, by the best hitter of all time in baseball, is an example of skillful performance with a relatively low probability of success. As I see it, the diachronicity problem exploits different reference classes, comparing various streak possibilities with the intrinsic probability of a particular shot. Gregory Stoutenburg (forthcoming) responds to each of these arguments, and here I take up what I consider to be the deepest challenge for the probability account, the challenge concerning the relationship between skill and luck. [Extracted from the article]

This paper uses data mining technology to mathematically model the training movements of tennis players, establish a three-dimensional data information database of athletes utilizing depth imaging, analyze the data with data mining algorithms, and derive the results after comparative evaluation and analysis with a database of movement characteristics of tennis dribblers. This paper uses video observation and mathematical modeling to construct a tennis player training action evaluation model, which provides a reference basis for tennis players to improve and enhance their tactical level; it can also provide a reference for the development of sports training special theory of tennis projects and enrich the tactical diagnosis method of tennis matches. To improve the accuracy of 3D human pose estimation, this paper adopts a 3D skeleton point extraction method based on RGBD images; for the action alignment problem, this paper uses a dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm; for the similarity measure, this paper gives a Pearson correlation coefficient method based on the joint point features of human parts. This paper aims to conduct a systematic theoretical analysis of tennis players' training movements based on theories and methods such as system science theory and social network analysis. On this basis, the characteristics of tennis training technology development are analyzed from a combination of qualitative and quantitative perspectives, while the development of tennis player training is explored based on tracking observations of tennis player movement training, and finally, the attack and service characteristics of tennis training are analyzed to better provide some reference for the sustainable development of tennis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research was conducted to determine the reasons and expectations of tennis players participating in the Eastern League organized by the tennis federation, preferring this sports branch. The research group consists of 138 athletes (53 women and 85 men) participating in the Eastern League Tennis Tournament. The scanning method was used in the research. As a data collection tool, a personal information form prepared by taking expert opinions and a scale form determining the reasons for preferring the tennis branch were used. SPSS statistical package program was used to analyze the data, and the significance was accepted as p<0.05. According to the results of the research, the research group; 73.9% are students, 39.9% are undergraduates, 56.5% are members of a club other than a tennis club, 55.8% do their training at Provincial Directorates of Youth and Sports, and 60%, It has been determined that 1 of them has a provincial championship. In addition, most of the athletes stated that the materials in the sports facilities were insufficient. It was seen that the friends, easy access to the facilities and prevalence, family and TV, cinema, and press-broadcasting were effective in preferring the tennis branch of the research group, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amateurism may be a widely discussed and recurring theme throughout the sports world, but the battle fought by the protagonists in the tennis field takes up a rather peculiar character at the end of the 1950s. Managers (acknowledged promoters or covetous businessmen), players, and spectators tear one another apart in the backstage. In such a muddle, the French camp seems to be in the forefront of the struggle to impose a new organization of international tennis. The positioning and acting of the leaders of the French Federation of Lawn- Tennis, sometimes anarchic and contradictory, deserve to be analyzed in the light of the inner squabbles marking tennis over the years 1950 through 1970. So much ground was covered with hesitations, oppositions, hidden interviews, and power grabs before the inauguration of the “tennis open era” in 1968 and the tenuous proximity between the amateur and professional players. Several actors, representing the great nations of tennis, proved to be very active, but the role played by Jean Borotra is to be particularly highlighted. An advocate of openness and more clarity for the players’ status, he managed to use his official functions as a leader within the International Federation of Lawn-Tennis to establish new international regulations, allowing more transparency in the players’ wages. At the same time, the operational and informal work carried out by Philippe Chatrier also demonstrates the determination of the French camp in favor of a reunited tennis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wearable sensor systems are a emerging tools for the evaluation of the sport's activity and can be used to quantify the external workload of the athlete. The main goal of this paper was to evaluate the validity and reliability of the "Armbeep inertial measurement unit" (IMU) sensor both in a closed tennis exercise and in open matchplay. Twentyfour junior tennis players performed a baseline drill and played matches, during which they wore a combined accelerometer and gyroscope sensor. Video footage was concomitantly recorded using a digital video camera. The agreement between the measurements was assessed with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and the standard error of measurement (SEM). A simple linear regression was used to predict the number of shots registered from the video and from the Armbeep IMU sensor's data. The number of total forehand and backhand shots during the drill repetitions showed an excellent test and re-test reproducibility (ICC≥0.90). There was a significant relationship between the Armbeep IMU sensor's number of contacts and the total number of shots (R2 = 0.938) which indicated the excellent reliability of the tested Armbeep IMU sensor for those parameters. Considering the accuracy of the total tennis shots and the small magnitude of error for wrist speed and acceleration, the Armbeep IMU sensor appears to be an appropriate on-court tool that can be used to monitor the hitting load during tennis practice and matches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of our daily activities, such as riding a bike to work or reading a book in a noisy cafe, and highly skilled activities, such as a professional playing a tennis match or a violin concerto, depend upon the ability of the brain to quickly make moment-to-moment adjustments to our behavior in response to the results of our actions. Particularly, they depend upon the ability of the neocortex to integrate the information provided by the sensory organs (bottom-up information) with internally generated signals such as expectations or attentional signals (top-down information). This integration occurs in pyramidal cells (PCs) and their long apical dendrite, which branches extensively into a dendritic tuft in layer 1 (L1). The outermost layer of the neocortex, L1 is highly conserved across cortical areas and species. Importantly, L1 is the predominant input layer for top-down information, relayed by a rich, dense mesh of long-range projections that provide signals to the tuft branches of the PCs. Here, we discuss recent progress in our understanding of the composition of L1 and review evidence that L1 processing contributes to functions such as sensory perception, cross-modal integration, controlling states of consciousness, attention, and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grand Slam tennis tournaments are played on different surfaces. The aims of the present study were to analyse the technical differences in the Grand Slam tournaments (Australian Open or AO, Roland Garros or RG, Wimbledon or W, and the United States Open or US), as well as to establish differences between winning and losing players. A total of 580 sets in 248 matches played in Grand Slams between 2017 and 2018 were analysed. To observe differences between the tournaments, a one-way analysis of variance (Kruskal Wallis) with the Bonferroni post-hoc test was performed. Univariate (Wilcoxon test) analysis of data was carried out to show the differences between the winning and losing performances of sets. Players who had more aces, points won on the 1st serve, winning shots and net points won more matches in the AO, W and US than in the RG (p<.05). However, in RG, players won more receiving points (43.56% of the points played) with chances to break the opponents' service game. The results also showed that the winning players were superior in both service and receiving, and the most influential variables on the outcome of the match were percentage of receiving points won, break points won, and percentage of points won on the first serve. Such knowledge may have implications for the design of appropriate game strategies and specific training sessions to improve performance in professional women's tennis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The famous Bradley-Terry model for pairwise comparisons is widely used for ranking objects and is often applied to sports data. In this paper we extend the Bradley-Terry model by allowing time-varying latent strengths of compared objects. The time component is modelled with barycentric rational interpolation and Gaussian processes. We also allow for the inclusion of additional information in the form of outcome probabilities. Our models are evaluated and compared on toy data set and real sports data from ATP tennis matches and NBA games. We demonstrated that using Gaussian processes is advantageous compared to barycentric rational interpolation as they are more flexible to model discontinuities and are less sensitive to initial parameters settings. However, all investigated models proved to be robust to over-fitting and perform well with situations of volatile and of constant latent strengths. When using barycentric rational interpolation it has turned out that applying Bayesian approach gives better results than by using MLE. Performance of the models is further improved by incorporating the outcome probabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the gender differences in aversion to COVID-19 exposure using a natural experiment of the 2020 US Open. It was the first major tennis tournament after the season had been paused for six months, held with the same rules and prize money for men and women. We analyze the gender gap in the propensity to voluntarily withdraw because of COVID-19 concerns among players who were eligible and fit to play. We find that female players were significantly more likely than male players to have withdrawn from the 2020 US Open. While players from countries characterized by relatively high levels of trust and patience and relatively low levels of risk-taking were more likely to have withdrawn than their counterparts from other countries, female players exhibited significantly higher levels of aversion to pandemic exposure than male players even after cross-country differences in preferences are accounted for. About 15% of the probability of withdrawing that is explained by our model can be attributed to gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]