Rules Disputes and Bad Line Calls
Because tennis is mostly self-refereed, every player has experienced an opponent who pushes the limits of acceptable behavior, and what is clearly illegal. Cheaters operate in two main ways: they cheat to claim points that aren’t theirs, and they cheat to mess with their opponent’s mental state. One point rarely makes a difference in a tennis match in terms of the score, but losing a point that a player thought they had won can be disruptive for much more than one point. This is an update of a story about one thorny opponent I had a few years back and what it taught me about keeping mental balance when your opponent is trying to mess with you.
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When I was in grad school, I was too busy to play matches until late in the school year, when I ended my layoff against a doubles team that included a guy I will call Jim. Because of the layoff, I was a little nervous, or at least I wasn’t feeling very confident, especially on my serve. In the first set, it was obvious that Jim had great hands. Not powerful, but he would hit his spots pretty well (Later, I found out he’s in the USTA New England Hall of Fame!). At any rate, we slipped through the first set by a break, 6-4.
Then, it got weird.
Jim was serving to open the second set and he hit a serve long. I bumped it into the net and said, “Out,” but instead of setting up to hit a second serve, he walked over to the ad-court and said, “You can’t call it after you’ve already hit into the net.” This was obviously nonsense, and we got into an argument. My claim was just that they need to respect our call, and calling a ball late, which I didn’t think I had, would still not invalidate the call. He was having none of it.
At this point my partner tried to convince me that we should just let it go, but I was fired up and the exchange continued for another 30 seconds or so before I angrily relented.
I did my best, but I could not shake my anger, and spent the rest of the set playing the most distracted, horrible tennis of my life. I started out just trying to kill the ball (particularly at Jim), then recognized that I wasn’t helping my team and tried to settle myself down. After dropping the second set, we found ourselves fighting for the match. We ended up pulling it out by winning a no-ad point to break them in the last game, and honestly, I felt more relief than thrill at the win. I was still mad at Jim, and maybe more mad at myself that I had let a little thing cost us the set and put the whole match in jeopardy.
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Jim was not gracious in defeat, but his partner apologized profusely, as did other members of the club who had overheard from other courts. They said he always tries little tricks to rattle his opponents. I have to acknowledge that he is clever, that he needed to change the feel of the match, and that he totally disrupted my rhythm with his little gambit.
For my part, I learned so much:
First, I need to check my mindset going into matches. Because I had not been playing, I was worried I was too rusty to win. I also felt pressure to (re-)prove myself to my teammates and myself, which put me closer to the edge when we had our dispute.
Second, I recognized that I am sensitive to arguments like this; they really get me out of sorts. There were several things about this that were significant:
-Nobody else has ever tried to take a point because of a late call on a serve. We all shrug off bad line calls in every match, but this “weird” rule dispute rattled me because it was so unexpected.
-I didn’t like the accusation that I was cheating by calling the serve out after I know I missed. I was not trying to cheat and got defensive.
-Once I was mad, I didn’t like the idea of letting him have his way.
-Once I started arguing, I was in Panic mode. If I had stopped and let it go quickly, I could have gotten back to playing, but I lost my composure before I realized this. It’s a personality trait of mine (I often never feel truly angry until I raise my voice.), and I usually avoid getting so agitated. I think I got there quickly because this was such an unexpected argument.
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I did a lot of the right things to settle myself down, but I still felt my face burning 15-20 minutes later. I tried breathing more, taking perspective (This was the first point of the set! Who cares if it was in or not?), recognizing that I was playing his game instead of mine, trying to get to the task at hand. All of these things helped, but it was a slow recovery. I wouldn’t have been able to get back if this had been later in the match. I need to be able to do this more quickly.
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I saw Jim again 6 months later at district championships where he was playing on the court next to me. One of his opponents had a weird serve style where he would start 2 steps behind the baseline and move forward during his service motion. He ended up hitting just about the same serve as anyone else, and definitely kept clear of the baseline. It was such a unique motion that it caught my eye, even though I had my own match to play.
Shortly thereafter, Jim started calling foot faults, which, again, in our league is really, really uncommon. Beyond that, I saw a few that he called where the server clearly didn’t step into the court! Jim saw that they guy did something unusual, surmised that he might be a little self-conscious about it, and poked at the weakness. It totally rattled the guy, and I recognized how intentional Jim’s dispute with me had been.
After watching that match, I decided to change my attitude about Jim. I think he’s is just a different kind of challenge to play, and I look forward to being better prepared the next time I play a guy like him.