Serena

[uspta990770809]

An inch becomes a foot

This is almost unbelievable.
So Mr. Yandell,,, you think that the foot fault rule should be one inch?
Are you kidding?
Guess lines people from now on will be carrying "micro-spectra-calibrater cameras" from now on,, to make sure the foot fault is only one inch,, and not one inch and a quarter !
This call would be quite impossible to make.
Please. You would have us change the rules of tennis, or not enforce the
existing rules of tennis that have served us all so well?
And why? Please,, when you have a moment,I would like to try to follow your reasoning on this issue.
Perhaps this is just a reflection of where our society is today.
The rule of law should apply to some,, but not to everyone?

Perhaps an exception from the foot fault rule because Serena is a super star? I don't think so.
I began assisting my high school coach teaching tennis when I was 17
years old in 1968. I am now 58, and a USPTA P-1 pro.
From a coaches perspective,, I will say that this is an example of a pro player, who has made several million dollars, and who does not believe that she needs any further help in her game from a real coach.
A good, decent , and observant coach could have seen that she has been using footwork that was bringing her dangerously close to making foot faults,, and he or she could have brought attention to this.
Foot faults,, as a rule,, are generally indications of improper and inconsistent foot work during the serve, as well as incorrect beginning stances. These are things an experienced coach can see and help correct.
If these pages are meant to be of an instructional nature to the tennis playing public, I believe you have missed an opportunity to give your audience sound advice about the serve, and the game.
I mentioned this previously in a post; Tennis does not need another super star who is a role model for many young players who exhibits such
unsportsmanlike behavior on the court.
I saw firsthand the effects of McEnroe's behavior had on tennis players,, both youth and adult,, for a good ten or fifteen years.
A televised and popular tennis star like this only makes the teaching
professional's job so much more difficult.
As a real teacher,, let me ask you to reconsider your logic and opinion
in this matter.
But as a coach,, and to get your attention,, which is always the first step,, I will tell you that you are absolutely wrong on this one.
Go from there,, grow,, and learn.
That's what this game is all about.
Shea Brown.

Shea is so right on this one. I'm two years older than he is, and when I still played competitive tennis, footfaulters drove many of us nuts. Not the ones that touched the lines with their foot, but the ones who stretched that inch to a foot whenever it was an important point, especially a break point. Some of those people actually think they are only footfaulting by an inch. Some it is more deliberate.

But to give a kid the chance to say, "Oh, they don't really call footfaults unless you go way into the court...". You touch the line; it's got to be a footfault. If you want to review it, fine; it would only take a couple of cameras, not the expensive system that is the current challenge system. (I think they should have that to decide whether a player actually had a play on a ball when an overule takes place.)

We've all run pro-ams where the ams had terrible footfaults. I told the refs to call them. I don't think the refs always listened to me,but when ams are playing for tens of thousands of dollars or more (in each match) as they were in my tournaments, you had to draw a line in the sand. My line was: no footfaults allowed. If you see it, you call it.

Roving umps are supposed to call those at junior events (in addition to unsportsmanlike violations),but most are hesitant to do this. The result is you get kids who routinely footfault 3 to 6 inches or more when the points get tight. It's bad enough when you don't have linespeople or refs, but when you have linesmen, they have to call what they see.

There is no possible way to instruct the linesmen except to call what they see. How about, "Well if it's a nice rally and it's pretty close to the line and ..." Of course, that's a ridiculous comparison, but it's equally ridiculous, especially in the US Open, to tell a linesman to be subjective in when they apply the footfault rule. (Incidentally, Serena said they had been calling them on her the whole tournament.) It's not the lineswoman's fault that Serena stepped on the line. What if she missed the serve by a millimeter as shown by the instant replay? No way the linesperson could actually see that, but if they call it and it survives the challenge, the linesperson was right. If the linesperson hadn't called such a hypothetical fault, it would probably be played and no one would ever know. So maybe we should just "play 2" whenever the error is within the margin of error of the challenge system. (It does have a margin of error that is greater than some of the misses that it calls.) I don't think so.

If a linesman sees something they gotta call it. If you are playing your buddy and you see his shot out or in, you gotta call what you see, or at least what you think you saw.

don brosseau
for 20 years, T.D for Huggy Bears Invitational

[uspta990770809]

Kim as torchbearer

How great is it to have Kim as the US Open champion as a role model, player model, etc., etc....

[johnyandell]

Well, I'm in the minority here. And that's ok.

I think it's far far too easy to see things strictly in black and white. You might say a rule is a rule is a rule. But legalism is only one way to view the world, and there are others. Just my opinion but I don't see the world that way.

My view is still it should have been settled by the tennis, not an inch or half inch foot fault. Yeah if Serena had been foot faulting a half foot for a while, then did it again at that juncture, sure. But that wasn't the reality.

That call changed things in a way that Serena rotating her front foot--or not--because we don't really know--never could. Still think it was crazy and provoked a chain reaction that did a lot of damage to the image of the game.

[oliensis]

Couple points:
Most pro players leave an extra inch, at least, between their foot and the line in order to prevent being called for a foot-fault.

If Serena had been getting called for it all week, she should have made an adjustment.

The damage to the game was not done so much by the linesperson's call. It was done by Serena's wild overreaction.

While the foot-fault call seems absolutely silly on its own, esp. insofar as it was fractional at most, the propensity to be sympathetic to breaking rules under extreme duress (big points, for example) has lately had a much more important expression in the "torture" issue. And in that context, I think it's absolutely clear that the line judge had no choice but to call it, assumi.ng that it was indeed the first time she'd seen it during the match.

This example may appear to be far afield, but indulge me a minute, please

The whole POINT of having rules (and moral laws--the 2 are intimately connected) is that, in pressure moments we do not have to appeal to what we intuit is right (which is an inconsistent slippery slope), but rather to what is rationally right.

Case in point (may appear too different from the case at hand, but stick w/ me...): Every nation that engages in torturing its prisoners feels that if it does not torture its prisoners it will risk extinction. The Japanese felt that, I'm sure, when they tortured US soldiers during WWII. And, indeed, given the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they were much closer to being correct than was the US when torturing prisoners for fear that Al Quaida threatened our existence.

Clearly Dick Cheney believes that if we had not tortured prisoners, we risked loss of American life. But, it is settled law that it is illegal to torture prisoners. It's settled internationally, and it's settled domestically. We convicted Japanese soldiers for torturing US prisoners. And executed those soldiers.

By virtue of what line of thinking is Dick Cheney less guilty than the guilty, executed Japanese soldiers? Answer: None. Is it OK for Cheney to be immoral because he feels Americans are threatened...but is it not OK for a Japanese soldier to be immoral because he feels threatened?

If it's OK for Cheney to torture because it's good for America, then there is no case in which it is not OK for anyone else to torture either...in which case it's OK for everyone to torture anytime that person (country) feels threatened. But that makes a prohibition on anything but whimsically motivated torture incoherent! And I don't think we want to slide down that slippery slope.

Is it OK to hook your opponent on a big point, but not on a 0-40 point? No. Is it OK to call a ball that clipped the line "out" if it barely cilps the line? No.

Are we a nation of laws? Is tennis a game of rules? (Oh, it's OK if I hit the ball back after it bounces twice on my side of the net, but not for you on your side of the net...?)
If you chase a drop shot to the net on a big point, hit a winner, but hit the net before the ball bounces a 2nd time, should the rule against hittiing the net while the point is in play be ignored because it "feels" trivial? No way.

Emotionally, believe it or not, I always wanted to see OJ acquitted at his murder trial because I loved watching him in the Rose Bowl in 1968, and I always thought he was really cool. But, should we indulge OJ because he was a football star, and because California is chock full of pretty blondes, so who cares if there's one less of them? I admit that I felt that way, but if he was guilty he should still have been convicted.

The only way the linesperson was wrong on this is if there were prior footfaults that she did NOT call...but she waited to call the footfault on a big point...or if it wasn't actually a footfault....or if she was directed by tournament officials to not enforce that rule as part of her job.

There are lots of things that we are obligated (morally or otherwise) to do, but that are a pain in the ass. And a linesperson calling a footfault is just one among a number of them. It's not a discretionary issue. It's a rule. And she was hired to enforce that rule. It would, frankly, be immoral for her to a) not call the footfault and to b) not fulfill the "contract" she had agreed to when she took the job. She's under no less an obligation to fulfill her duties than is a judge who might be tempted to acquit a guilty defendant because she's pretty...or wealthy. Granted, the apparent magnitude of the issue is different. but the obligation itself, to fulfill the duties that one incurs when one signs on to do a job, are the same.

[uspta990770809]

Well said, Oliensis

Very well said, Oliensis!

[uspta146749877]

Line calls

It is very difficult to expect linemen to call:
1.in consistent way

and at the same time
2.selectively,depending how critical a ball is

[tennisplayer]

Serena's behavior cannot be condoned. She deserves to be punished with a fine and a temporary ban, IMO.

But I have a problem with the linesperson also, which is harder to formulate. Basically, I find it hard to believe this was the first time Serena foot-faulted in the match. If Serena had been called earlier for foot-faulting, the ugliness that happened may not have come to pass, and Serena would have had a chance to fix it sooner. If Serena had been let off before, and then called on the most crucial point of the match, the linesperson's behavior cannot be excused, either.

If, indeed, this was the first time Serena foot-faulted, well, the linesperson is blameless and was just doing her job.

[mntlblok]

Foot faulting

In spite of the fact that I'm usually too prone to "black and white" thinking, I can see most everyone's side on this one. I don't foot fault. I stand a couple of inches behind the service line, just because it strikes me as being "fair" to my opponents.

It seems that the culture of our game is such that, among many, considering foot-faulting as part of the actual rules is out of line. You have to be just a total jerk to point it out to someone that he's foot faulting. I've heard all the arguments; "I'm not coming in behind my serve, so it doesn't matter". Well, if it doesn't matter, why don't you just back up a few feet? I see it as a matter of character.

In this particular case, I also find it rather worrisome that a foot-fault was called at this stage of the match. There seems to be a lot of potential for the linesperson to have wrongly injected herself into the match. It certainly seems likely that the linesperson had seen it earlier without having called it. If this were, indeed, the first time that she had seen Serena do it, then, putting myself in her position, I'm just not sure what I would have done. Actually, I'm pretty sure that, because of just such a possibility, I wouldn't allow myself to *be* in that position. You can't win.

Interestingly, I caught some of the women's doubles final today. They showed a foot fault by Serena that they said had been recorded a few points previously. 'Splain *that* one to me, after what's been going on the last couple of days.

The more I think about it, the more I think there needs to be a mechanism for dealing with foot-faulting in a different manner. Have I heard of something called "soft warnings" - or something like that? Maybe the player is warned (quietly on a changeover) that they are in danger of having a foot fault called - before actually calling it. The only reason that I'm up for that is because of that culture in our sport that it's not "really" a rule. Part of my reason for being less black and white about the issue is the fact that I drive over the speed limit, and can't come up with a good argument against someone who would point that out. :-) (Decades of setting cruise control at 10mph over the limit has yielded no traffic stops).

Along that line, I *have* quietly mentioned to opponents in tournaments that they were rather blatantly foot faulting - especially when they are crossing the center line and using that for gaining some otherwise unavailable angles. It's been rather shocking how often the response is an argument that they aren't doing it. :-)

I've also been surprised to learn what a high percentage of players in senior tournaments foot fault. I'm sure I would be more inclined to call opponents for it if so many of my own partners weren't *also* foot faulters - at least a little bit. :-) There are typically at least one or two roving officials at USTA adult tournaments. I've never seen one of them call a player for a foot fault, in spite of the fact that I'd bet at least half *do* foot fault.

Another issue is whether a player *knows* that he is foot faulting. I used to assume that most who foot fault don't realize that they are doing the little foot-turn or unconscious little step or drag of the foot, but I'm a bit of an amateur photographer and have been known to wander around the courts at a tournament with my camera. It is absolutely amazing how rare it is to see a foot fault when a server sees someone with a camera next to their service line.

Another aspect of the current issue is the way the media reacted to Serena's "staredown" of a linesperson over a foot fault early in the tournament. My sense was that the announcers thought that it was perfectly appropriate and got a big kick out of it. I've wondered since if maybe that wasn't part of why Serena felt empowered to treat the next linesperson that way over a foot fault.

I asked someone a while back when they had changed the "palming" rule in basketball (I stopped following the sport long ago). I've been told that the rule has never actually been changed. I guess it's just the American way. :-) Sorta like illegal immigrants, eh?

Kevin
Savannah

[tommyt]

Interesting, ESPN showed a slow mo replay of Serena serving in today's doubles match... she foot faulted but it was not called. Was the lines person intimidated by the other nights antics? Were the lines people told not to call foot faults? Why wouldn't they call an obvious foot fault? Why wouldn't Serena learn from the other night and take a "step" back to be sure not to foot fault?

[uspta2712824457]

Serena + footfault = losing it?

IMO, There is only one person that truly knows if Serena foot faulted. And that is the lineswoman. However, bad call or not, that does not give a player, any player, the right to treat a official the way Serena did! John McEnroe might have gotten angry. Smashed racquets, called the umpire stupid, cursed out fans by getting on his nerves, but I don't think Johnny Mac would ever charge towards the linesperson and say that he feels like "shoving this ball down your (expletive) throat".

Totally classless display by Serena. She knew she was going to lose and in typical Serena fashion, turns into a diva/drama queen. It worked. despite her losing, she is still in the news and we are still talking about her. Her abuse was a disgusting act that should not be tolerated.

Foot fault or no foot fault. Tennis is a game of class, elegance, intelligence, and respect. Serena showed none of these. I'm sure all Serena apologists will defend her, but really, is this who we want as the face of the game of tennis? If so, then let's encourage more NBA players to get DUI's and procreating with their baby's momma. Let's allow NFL players to continue to beat up their girlfriends. Let's now allow Michael Vick to start killing more dogs, but let's make sure he does it on the 50 yard line right on the team's logo. Our nations culture has become more offensive, more violent, more confrontational. It's a black eye for tennis, and a long day for teaching pros like myself when we have to explain to our young students the actions of a pretentious, arrogant, potty mouth and why there is no excuse for that behavior in our sport.

sorry if this is long winded, but I care about the integrity and professionalism of our sport. I'm sure everyone who has read this far in my post feels the same way.

Thank You,

KL

[uspta502580821]

good writing Oliensis!

I agree,, Oliensis makes some great points, and they are well stated!
I think your political analogies are right on.
And thank you Don Brosseau for your compliment.
I have a friend,, Mike Cooke, the old UNC basketball captain, who goes to the Huggy Bear every year. He called me once so I could hear the "Eagles"
playing in the background,, and another year he called when the "Dixie Chicks" were playing!! The Forstman brothers, and your community, have been running a great show for a long while,,I hope to see some of it myself one day!

Shea Brown

[oliensis]

Thx for kind comments about post above.

Played a match yesterday morning and had an intersting event occur. Was down a break, receiving at 5-4 (opponent had 5). Ad out. He serves, to my backhand, it hits the tape on the service line, I drive the ball down the line, with no margin for error, I'm late because the ball has skidded of the tape and I'm struggling to just get it in. It's half on the tape, half out on opponent's sideline.

He stops and says, "Wasn't it out? The serve?"

I say, "No, it was on the tape," and circle the mark. ( and even if I were wrong about that, I played it as good. I wasn't going to call the serve long expost facto if my return had been wide.)

He says, "isn't there another mark?"

I say, "Look, I played it good. But if you want to play 2, go ahead." It was just a friendly match...or had been up to that point, anyway.

Takes me back to an important high school match 30+ years ago. 3rd set. I was serving, 4-5, 30-40. I served a ball that was clearly out. My opponent, Tom Honea (sp?) (he was 6'1", I was 5'5") made no call, and hit a deep forehand straight at me. I was unprepared because the ball looked out to me.

What happened? My bad. I lost the point and the match. Couldn't argue that he should have called my out ball in. It was my brain cramp. I lose.

What seems to have been lost in the Serena / Hawkeye era is that unless a ball is clearly out, clearly seen as out, and CALLED out, it's in.

Brain cramps are just unforced errors of the mental variety.

Footfaults are a weird sort of call, though. In a match w/out an umpire you're not even allowed to call a footfault on your opponent (I think I'm right about that in USTA rules). You're just allowed to warn him that if he keeps footfaulting you'll call an official.

No conclusion here...just ruminating on the odd status of the footfault...braincramps, and the "cooperative" nature of the rules of tennis.

[airforce1]

Thx for kind comments about post above.

Footfaults are a weird sort of call, though. In a match w/out an umpire you're not even allowed to call a footfault on your opponent (I think I'm right about that in USTA rules). You're just allowed to warn him that if he keeps footfaulting you'll call an official.

No conclusion here...just ruminating on the odd status of the footfault...braincramps, and the "cooperative" nature of the rules of tennis.

Granted the code is for unofficiated matches, but it provides exceptional guidance; That ALL points are to be called in the same spirit, no difference for break points or match points.

Code-
10. Treat all points the same regardless of their importance. All points in
a match should be treated the same. There is no justification for considering
a match point differently than the first point.

Pretty shocked at JY's point of view on this.

[johnyandell]

Hey it wasn't the first or hopefully the last shocking thing I'll say. I understand where everyone is coming from but I still don't see it any other way.