Make tennis like boxing: divided by weight class? (ten years ago):
Certainly right now the singles game is typically pretty predictable and often the winner is simply the taller player. Could an amazing player 5’8″ tall reasonably hope to beat Novak Djokovic at 6’2″?
The women’s final is going on right now. Chris Evert dominated American tennis at 5’6″. Margaret Court dominated world tennis at 5’9″ (of course, today she must be condemned as a hater: “Court has been a consistent critic of same-sex marriage in Australia”). Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina (a born-again Kazakhstani, presumably after watching Borat?) are both 6′ tall.
The men’s final tomorrow is between Floridian Ben Shelton is 6’4″ and Alexander Zverev is 6’6″.
Why not tear the whole thing down, especially since we can’t figure out what a “woman” might be and also because Science recognizes 74 genders? If there were a section of tennis competition for players 5’0″ to 5’4″ tall, for example, we might discover interesting athletes and competitions that can’t possibly happen right now (ATP top 200 currently has no players under 5’7″).
Borat’s deliberate replacement of murderous Cossacks with innocent Kazakhs was a blood libel.
You should have seen the men’s badminton final at the last Olympics. Viktor Axelsen the Danish gold medallist was like a terrifying Daddy Long Legs spider on that court. His six feet four inches frame just completely dominated his Thai opponent. Axelsen easily won every single set and coasted to a victory.
Viktor Axelsen did not lose a SINGLE set throughout the entire Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Basketball seems very determined by height, so it might be competitionally fruitful to introduce height classes.
Tom: A friend prefers Korean basketball to the NBA because the players aren’t so tall that they can simply dunk a lot of the time. “The game is much more interesting because the players have to work harder,” he says. The basket height hasn’t been adjusted to compensate for increased player height in the U.S. so the NBA is a different game compared to when basketball was invented in 1891.
I’ve been 6-0 tall since age 17 and used to love basketball, but haven’t played since 1978 when I was cut from my high school Freshman team.
And… the taller stork won the men’s final.
What’s next? Basketball for shorties?
Look at Alcaraz – he is quite shorter than Sinner. While height is quite important for tennis, at some moment it starts to interfere with mobility (basically tall player has to dip more to change direction at the same rate as shorter player), so there is middle ground.
Look at another game that favors height – pickleball. Anna Leigh Waters completely dominates it (best athlete of all time by any metric), while being shorter than most top level players.