1977 Federal Study Considered Why People Are Rude on Tennis Courts

If you’ve ever exhibited rage on the tennis court, the National Endowment for the Humanities has a study for you.

In 1977, the NEH won a Golden Fleece award from Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, who gave the awards for wasteful and nonsensical spending, in this case for giving a $2,500 grant — $11,000 in 2021 dollars — to Arlington County, Virginia, to study why people are rude, cheat, and lie on the local tennis courts.  

“The federal taxpayer should not be taxed to determine why tennis can't always be a ‘love game,’” Proxmire said when doling out the award.

The NEH gave the grant “to determine why tennis players hog the courts, become frustrated when they have to wait to play, and what responsibility local tennis players have in trying to help the county solve its problem with overcrowding on the courts,” Proxmire’s press release said at the time.

The NEH justified the grant by saying that tennis players lie about how long they play and resist requests to prove local residency on un-monitored public courts.

They also wanted to find out why tennis players get frustrated when they have to wait for hours or go from court to court to find an open one on which to play. The vandalism of tennis nets, cables, cranks and lights was also cited as a serious problem, Proxmire said in 1977.

The county matched the $2,500 grant to hire both a professor of sociology and a professor of ethics and philosophy to consult and to conduct a survey of the attitudes of about 300 players towards the local tennis regulations, as well as hold two public meetings to guide the local tennis players in role playing activities.

“The taxpayers of this country have been aced for some pretty stupid projects in the past, but a grant to study tennis court etiquette is the biggest default to date,” Proxmire said.

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