Part one.
So, in December of 2020, I played in a USTA singles tennis tournament at Reffkin Park in Tucson. My first match was against a good player, and the two of us played at a really high level. Indeed, to my surprise and delight, I found myself playing perhaps my best tennis in several years. The match was competitive and hotly-contested, with each point feeling significant – but the two of us remained friendly, complimenting each other’s shots and acknowledging the quality we were playing at.
The first set was really close, and I won something like 7-5. As my opponent (let’s call him “Bob”) began the second-set tiebreaker (first to seven points, win by two), someone I recognized (but didn’t really know) from my tennis club (the Tucson Racquet Club), wandered over and started watching. At 1-4 down in the tiebreaker, I called Bob’s first serve out. At that point, the observer – we’ll call him “Stan” – spoke up: “that serve was in, it’s his point.”
It turned out he was a USTA official overseeing the entire tournament, empowered in certain circumstances to adjudicate controversial calls. I was dumbfounded. My adrenaline was already way up, as I had been highly focused on each point in the match, and I exploded. “You can’t do that!!” I said, loudly. “The ball was out,” Stan responded. “It’s his point.”
I don’t know if I had ever “sputtered,” before, but I certainly did here. “But … but! That’s crazy! What about all the calls that went against me before you wandered over!?” I said. “And it was out!” I insisted. I was fuming at this point. (Remember, this was the best I had played in maybe three years – to have a bystander all of a sudden hand a free point to my opponent at this critical stage of the match took the floor right out from under me.)
Bob was standing on the other side of the court, watching, and a little embarrassed. Finally, although I was completely distracted and off my game, he and I resumed the tiebreaker, now 1-5. I quickly lost it at 1-7, and then — with Stan still standing there, watching — the third set tiebreaker as well.
The rule is that officials are supposed to become involved only when asked to by one of the players (generally when they feel their opponent is making deliberately bad calls), which certainly hadn’t happened in this case, where Bob and I were both enjoying the match and crediting each other with good shots. It may be that they are technically empowered to overrule calls where they are especially egregious, but Stan was no closer to the call than I was, so all he was really doing was imposing his judgment on the call instead of mine … and of course I had only called Bob’s first serve out, so he still had a second serve. I wasn’t giving myself a point. In those circumstances, awarding Bob the point was especially unfair.
Indeed, what happened to me in that match has never happened to any of my friends, although several of them told me of other similar controversies they had seen Stan involved in over the years. Still, while what happened to me may have been rare and unjustified, c’est la vie. It’s only tennis, right? I laugh about it, generally.
(And to this day I get extra pleasure out of giving Stan the cold shoulder when I see him around the Tucson Racquet Club, responding to his occasional greetings when we pass each other in the hallway with a grunt and mumbled response. I can’t bring myself to act like nothing happened and be friendly with him. If, some day, Stan wants to ask me why I’m cold to him (or flat-out apologize, though I doubt he even remembers our encounter at Reffkin), fair enough. Until then … eh. I’ll nurse my grudge quite contentedly.
Part 2, tomorrow.
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