OT: The Throwing vs Hitting Tennis Bet

[Nick Rainey]

you obviously know nothing about tennis. the thrower is at a huge dissadvantage. the glove helps a little thats why it is even money. with no glove, how do you catch the serve? its almost impossible, especially someone like Ken Kao, a Nik Fustar protege.

[baronzeus]

you know more about this than i do, and you are very willing to make this bet. theres something you know that i dont.

[almostbusto]

[ QUOTE ]
you obviously know nothing about tennis. the thrower is at a huge dissadvantage. the glove helps a little thats why it is even money. with no glove, how do you catch the serve? its almost impossible, especially someone like Ken Kao, a Nik Fustar protege.

[/ QUOTE ] since Tom was just agreeing with what i wrote, i should say that what i wrote was in regards to the glove prop and not so much the no glove prop. though i think it remains true for the glove prop IF you can actually catch a server a decent amount of the time(which according you you can't)... i've never tried to catch a serve so i don't know if thats possible, you would definitely have to be damn dextrous.

anyway i was talking about a glove.

[almostbusto]

[ QUOTE ]
you know more about this than i do, and you are very willing to make this bet. theres something you know that i dont.

[/ QUOTE ]as baronzeus has stated. you are the author of this prop (as far as i know at least) and being the catcher is the side that you are putting yourself on. this is further evidence that my comments ring true.

[GTL]

obviously nick has had some practice on the catching/throwing side of the bet. Being able to throw is quite clearly a huge advantage. I can't for the life of me figure out how he would be able to catch a 100+ serve on a regular basis, or serve himself without having the ball drilled back really hard but there must be something I am missing.

With a glove this is a huge sucker bet as the racket would be a big dog in my opinion.

[mntbikr15]

Someone needs to make videos of this and host them.

BTW....anyone wanna prop bet a bike race with me [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. I dont play tennis

[cbloom]

almostbusto is way off IMHO.

The catcher has to stand way back to have any chance, standing near the net, the ball would be drilled past you every time. Plus to catch the first serve you have to stand way back.

From that far back it's not easy to throw the ball just over the net and control side to side positioning perfectly.

It should be obvious the catcher is at a huge disadvantage.

It's also obvious Nick has some edges :

1. he has practiced a lot being a catcher

2. hitting a soft thrown ball is very different than hitting a ball coming at speed off a racket; his opponents will be used to hitting a ball that comes in with pace, not a thrown duck

3. maybe he's worked out some really nasty spin throws?

4. as he said he won't feel the money pressure and hopefully opponent will get nerves and choke; tennis can be like golf, a mental game where if you start choking you totally fall apart.

I'd love to see video of these matches.

[p-i]

[ QUOTE ]
Someone needs to make videos of this and host them.

[/ QUOTE ]

[almostbusto]

i didn't advocate standing near the net per se. i just said that if it was caught near the net then its over. basically the racket is going to have to be running and scrambling to hit very well place shots on the edges of the playing surface or potentially deep/short shots. so a lot of the time the racket won't be able to smash it back. when i played tennis i always found it very difficult to hit a shot that is very short will any kind of power when you have to run full steam just to get it to. anyway there will be occasions when the glove should be able to "play the net" or catch a ball up close when the racket has to effectively dive just to get it over.

i wouldn't expect the volleys to last very long though. so maybe the service game is what really matters. it seems intuitive that the service game is going to be very lopsided. in which direction is debatable though [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. first, the gloves serve will most likely be god awful unless the glove can throw the ball anywhere or something. but i can't see the glove missing many catches at all. in which case the game effectively starts with the glove as the server(if he is going to catch 100%) but he is serving from a closer distance without restriction on placement. so each player would have the advantage when the other guy served

[Entity]

Please post locations for the various games if/when they happen. I'd very possibly be interested in flying down to Vegas to watch.

Rob