Tennis played with a full cadre of line officials is a privilege typically reserved for tour level professional matches. With electronic line calling becoming more and more prevalent, even that may soon be a relic of the past. Sometimes people make mistakes, and there are provisions in the ITF Rules of Tennis for handling the situation when a call is made, but immediately corrected.
Case: If a chair umpire or line umpire calls “out” and then corrects the call to good, what is the correct decision?
Decision: The chair umpire must decide if the original “out” call was a hindrance to either player. If it was a hindrance, the point shall be replayed. If it was not a hindrance, the player who hit the ball wins the point.
Appendix VI Role of Court Officials, Case 7, ITF Rules of Tennis, USTA Friend at Court
There is ambiguity in the declaration that the player who hit the ball wins the point. If the player who was hitting the ball after the bounce that precipitated the call/correction returned the ball in play, they certainly do not automatically win the point. A better way to state the last sentence in the Case Decision is “If it was not a hindrance and the point was continued to completion, then the point stands.”
I don’t recall ever seeing an official make a call and immediately reverse themselves. As a result, my perception is that the correction almost always comes from the chair umpire. That immediately brings to mind the most emphatic correction call I have ever seen. It was voiced by Mohamed Lahyahi in a match between Milos Raonic and Marin Cilic.
In that clip, the call was made as Cilic was playing a shot that he missed. The tacit understanding by all on the court was that Cilic was hindered by the out call. However, had his shot landed in the court and Raonic stopped the point, then Raonic would have been hindered by the over-the-top correction call from the chair.
It is pretty common to see hindrance debates when a call is corrected via a player challenge using an electronic line calling system such as HawkEye. I failed to find an example of a debated hindrance following an immediate human official correction. If anyone has a link to a clip, I would appreciate being pointed at it.
Next week we will finish off Appendix VI “Role of Court Officials” with the final Case Decision in that section. It is a bit of a mystery to me how part of the scenario behind the forthcoming ruling could even occur.
