General Tennis Discussions

[PKBasu]

Also, it's likely to be very windy on a roof-terrace. That makes it much more difficult to play (and control the tennis ball).

[Rajiv]

Hong Kong where space is at a huge premium , Roof Top Tennis is way of life. Our Weekly Tennis meetup since the past 12 years is held regularly on 3 roof top courts , and this club Ram is also an honorary member and has played with us many a times , and always enquires about the roof top tennis whenever we speak , Surrounded by high walls where every shot make a big echo , Ram’s thunderbolts serves sound, echo like a bolt of lightning.

In fact at my club the Kowloon Cricket Club all of our Tennis courts are on roof top, and only time we play outdoors is during the Wimbledon when we have the Wimbledon week and we take permission from the Cricket section to use the cricket ground for playing Tennis on the cricket outfield.

Or this club ,where we play sometimes , it is right in the middle of the sea, they have built 5 courts right over a Ferry berthing terminal , and one can see the Tennis courts by clicking this website , and then go Sports and recreation section , click on Tennis , and a image of indoor court appears , few seconds later image of Tennis courts on the sea over a ferry terminal appears

https://www.pacificclub.com.hk/

So Wind factor is never a issue in Hong Kong and is carefully considered , some by high walls or by Mesh netting ,

[jayakris]

So, where is Peng Shuai? If you haven't seen the news, she has not been seen or heard from since Nov 1st when she made a serious sexual assault allegation against a former Chinese vice premier and a powerful member of the politburo, which was erased from Weibo within 20 minutes.

What we know about tennis player Peng Shuai's sexual assault allegations and current whereabouts

This is serious stuff. What is going on???

WTA's CEO said today that WTA is willing to pull out of China, even if they lose millions, unless Peng's safety can be confirmed.

[Atithee]

Serious but par for the course for China. Shameful conduct that the world has no guts to challenge despite WTA’s posturing. As if Xi cares.

[jayakris]

^^^ Oh no. If they have really silenced her, the world will react. WTA/ATP will boycott China and many countries will boycott the Winter Olympics if we don't see her to be alive and safe, soon. This is serious stuff.

But you bet China will get her out on a live TV interview with Chinese media and will make her say that everything was made up and she has no such allegations. China knows this game.

[jayakris]

Due to the seriousness of the Peng issue, I am changing the title of the thread temporarily till the matter, hopefully, gets resolved. Mod, Jay

[jayakris]

Whoa - China blocks CNN's signal to prevent reporting about tennis star ... That sounds serious... But I suppose they do that to CNN pretty often, by CNN's own admission in the video.

[rajitghosh]

China's economic clout is so high that they would get away with this. I doubt WTA would have the courage to pull out. After Doklam last year while there was a lot of talk about boycotting Chinese products did India actually manage? There's so much stuff that only China produces that you just can't stop doing business with them. Right from Diwali lamps to critical automobile parts everything comes from there. As a result this kind of human resource violation is par for the course for them.

[prasen9]

China may just sit it out knowing that the WTA boycott cannot go on for a long-time because of their money and the 1.3 billion people market that WTA wants.

BTW, I had a personal tangle with the Chinese censorship machine. We wrote a paper on visual analytics that got accepted at the journal Visual Analytics. China puts in some money to support the journal although it is run by Elsevier. The editorial board, etc. is stacked with Chinese researchers. We got a request to fix all our figures (about 8-9 of them that had maps --- we were working on geospatial viz) after the paper was put online but the figures blocked out. Confused we asked them what the issue was. They said that the maps were not consistent with the "China world view" and not the "India world view", presumably linking that to my Indian heritage. Interestingly, we had not used the Indian maps either because they do not show Kashmir as currently divided up. We had used maps showing the LOC as the boundary with dashed lines there. Apart from Kashmir, they had objections to the whole northern border (Arunachal, etc.) with China. Now, there may be historical truth in that the border was never formally defined and agreed but I am not a historian and do not really care. I was demonstrating cutting-edge technology. We tried to use the line of actual control and the few kms here and there were irrelevant because of the scale of the map showing almost the entire world or at least the whole of Asia in some. Anyway, they did not really stop there. There were objections to showing Taiwan as a country. And, they wanted us to fix the maps. We offered to block the borders with a note that the editors wanted us to block borders not settled or in dispute since it took us some work to get the paper in. But, that did not work. We had had enough and withdrew the paper. The pain is that we now have to go through another set of reviews and edits to finally get the paper published but after a point you have to stand up for scientific integrity.

The talk about Chinese censorship of CNN reminded me of our experience, which I thought I'd share.

Oh, and the funny thing is that I have been called an anti-national primarily by the right-wing fundamentalists (hey, I can call them that given what they called me right? ) here, though Jay defended me. Now, I am being accused of being a pro-India too from the other side. I don't want to say I am unbiased or centrist or anything like that. Everyone is biased. And, I would badly fail the Tebbit Test (or its equivalent replacing England with the U.S.).

Anyway, back to the topic. I hope Shuai gets the justice she deserves. Is there any chance she has escaped China and is hiding low? Or trying to escape?

[Atithee]

She (Xi to be exact) has already posted that she’s fine and no need to worry. No one believes her message.

[jayakris]

We shouldn't underestimate the impact of Shuai's disappearance. The world will react more seriously to this than it has to almost anything China has done in the past so many years. Quite different than political, religious, economic or military transgressions. This is a deep emotional issue for a lot of people. If they show her on live TV to be alive and refuting the whole thing (even if forced), I agree that the world will use that excuse and won't pursue the mater. If China doesn't do something fairly soon like that, I fully expect WTA to leave and for many countries to boycott the Winter Olympics. Every woman athlete in the world will refuse to go to China, otherwise. Maybe men think that this is something small. It is not.

No woman at age 35 after a successful career would do what Shuai did without solid reasons. She knew that she had nothing much to gain from it, and a lot to lose, in China. If she hadn't posted what she posted, then there would be no issue for her to refute it in no time. So it wasn't a prank or anything.

It is one thing for the perpetrator to manage to go free in the end after investigations or court cases, and for the state or the powerful people to help in that... That happens fairly often in many countries and people will accept that as reality. But the state silencing a woman just for speaking about what happened to her, is entirely another thing. What is happening is truly horrible, and the world should be ashamed if they don't react to it.

[Atithee]

Wanna bet, Jay? Nothing will happen.

[jayakris]

Prasen, much appreciation for your taking the tough stand and withdrawing that paper! Absolutely the right thing to do. You should actually give the matter some exposure in professional societies in your area, and complain to Elsevier through proper channels. Write an article in an Indian newspaper about this experience. People need to know what is going on in the world, and how China and Chinese researchers (though they may have no choice in it) are really going too far.

[jayakris]

Wanna bet, Jay? Nothing will happen.

Nothing will happen, if China does something. And I will bet that China will do whatever is needed to make sure that nothing will happen. But I will bet that this matter won't die without people seeing Shuai Peng in a live interview, or something like her calling WTA personally and saying all is well. Something like that will happen. All the money-based decision-makers will only be too eager to let China go with any excuse they can give. China knows it, and they will produce the excuse. Then there is no argument between you and me

[prasen9]

Prasen, much appreciation for your taking the tough stand and withdrawing that paper! Absolutely the right thing to do. You should actually give the matter some exposure in professional societies in your area, and complain to Elsevier through proper channels. Write an article in an Indian newspaper about this experience. People need to know what is going on in the world, and how China and Chinese researchers (though they may have no choice in it) are really going too far.

Will do all of this. Thanks for the support. Will try to get in touch with Beall (of Beall's List). I have never ever before in my 20+ years in academia seen anything like this.