OT: The Throwing vs Hitting Tennis Bet

[MikeMcQ1]

People,

This match will never get beyond the service game assuming the raquet player is anything above an excellent high school level player. Someone at Nick's level will utterly crush any kind of athlete, glove or no glove.

I'm assuming the thrower must "serve" from behind the baseline and into the service area of his opponent. A major-league pitcher isn't throwing a tennis ball 90 MPH, much less some shmuck. AND it must fall within the service area. Try throwing a tennis ball as hard as you can with enough angle to get it to drop down into the service area. There will be no pace on the thrower's serves whatsoever. The tennis player will destroy these serves, *even* if they were coming at 90 MPH.

Now fast forward to catching serves. A glove will be absolutely neccessary. Any thought of not using a glove would be ridiculous. A serve from a top-rate tennis player is hard enough to get a tennis raquet on, let alone catch and control the ball. Even a 2nd serve will be coming hard and with a lot of spin. OK, so you happened to catch a serve. Now you are deep in your backcourt. This is going to put a big damper on your strategy to lob, drop, or whatever let alone throwing a normal shot into play. Again, the raquet player will destroy just about anything other than a perfectly placed lob.

The only chance I give a catcher is if he can (or would have the balls to) catch serves before they hit the ground. Stand at the net and catch the serves there would be his only chance...and now you're risking injury.

This contest gets more interesting if it was a couple of average 3.0 USTA players.