The tennis racket actually was part of the intended solution in an earlier version of the level. It was first added as decoration, but when it wasn't burrowed into the terrain, a shimmier assigned from the intended location would get stopped by it. Rather than burrow it into the terrain initially, I simply added an additional miner to the skillset, which was used to cut through the tip of the racket and allow the shimmier to continue uninterrupted. This was changed in v4 when the miners were made into pickup skills to clean up the intended solution a little. It also makes it so that getting the shimmier started from the racket wouldn't also grant an extra miner, but that's not why that change was made.
To be honest, I may soon have to choose if I'm going to ask for help to fix the level, or if I need to choose a backroute to convert into a new intended solution, as I'm starting to wonder if there's no way to enforce the correct stacker placements (I actually expected people to try to backroute the level with the stackers, which is why the level's height is what it is, but certainly not in the manner they're actually being used. I guess once I know where the skills are supposed to be used I start becoming blind to other possible areas to use them).
If anyone has any thoughts on what I should do with this level going forward, I'd like to hear them.
(The post about the racket from JRT was the most recent post when I started typing this; looks like some more replays were submitted while I was typing)