As soon as I found out that the Jelena Ostapenko/Taylor Townsend incident at the US Open included controversy over the warmup, I knew the time had finally arrived to share my own related bitter tale from a tournament of yore. It is probably one of the most subtle yet egregious acts of poor sportsmanship I have ever experienced in a tournament. Since I grew up playing junior tennis and still compete in many tournaments as an adult, that is saying something.
A few years ago, I played a Level 1 National doubles tournament that famously uses a shortened format. While my partner and I were far from home, some of the other players in the draw were essentially competing on their own courts. In violation of USTA Adult and Family tournament regulations, this particular tournament did not provide any warm-up courts for the tournament players. I didn’t know this until much later, but some local players enjoyed the advantage of priority pre-booking warm-up courts at the facility. By the time court reservations opened up to the general public, no additional courts were available.
My partner scrambled to find a court at a nearby facility, which we booked, allowing enough time to return to the host site before our match. Unfortunately, the tournament was running behind schedule, and there was a fairly significant gap between the warmup and when we actually walked onto the court to play our match.
In what I now recognize as a red flag, our opponents immediately suggested that we skip the warm-up. There was no way we were going to agree to that.
That’s when, I believe, significant gamesmanship began. One opponent announced that she had to use the bathroom and immediately disappeared as her partner sat down on the bench. We stood around, waiting. When the missing player returned, she asked the umpire how much time was left in the warmup. The answer was the full five minutes since we hadn’t hit a single ball yet. That little exchange brought the official over, who started the clock as soon as the first ball was struck and kept a close eye on us throughout, since our match had already wasted a lot of court time.
The warmup that followed was dreadful. The player across from me sprayed balls everywhere, let them pile up on her side of the net, and would stare blankly at them until I suggested she should pick them up and feed them back in. I got maybe four clean groundstrokes, three volleys, and two serves total. As the umpire called time, I advised my partner that I was not at all warmed up, but it would be OK because the girl I was hitting with was terrible.
As it turned out, once the match began, she wasn’t terrible at all. She was, in fact, very good. That realization hit me like a punch to the gut, and my irritation over the warmup soared to Ostapenko-level heights. Add in a string of questionable line calls, which is very impactful in no-ad shortened formats, and we were in trouble from the start. We lost the match, and my own performance was very poor. Later, we learned that our opponents had secured a warm-up court at the host facility and had walked straight off that court into our match. That was a tremendous advantage.
There’s nothing in the rules that says a player has to warm up well or even that a warm-up has to occur at all. I have no issue with a team suggesting to skip it if they know they’re ready and suspect their opponents aren’t. That’s on us if we’re foolish enough to agree. But intentionally refusing to hit balls to your opponent during a warmup crosses a line into terribly poor sportsmanship.
I don’t begrudge our opponents their ability to book a court. That’s simply home facility advantage. However, I still resent to this day her refusal to give me any semblance of a functional warmup. Looking back, I should have asked the umpire if we could switch to hitting with our own doubles partners instead. I also regret not starting the warmup before the missing player returned. If I had known what was coming, I would have done something different.
Tennis is the only sport where opponents are expected to warm up together. In doubles, it might make more sense to hit with your partner, but in singles, there’s no alternative but to do it with your opponent. The cooperative warmup is a fragile social contract, one that can be easily undermined with a touch of gamesmanship. I feel fortunate that similar incidents aren’t commonplace in the sport.
I have more examples of poor warm-up behavior and subtle rule quirks that I’ll share in future posts. But for tomorrow, I’ll take on the tennis adage: “You can’t win the match in the warmup.” Except… maybe you can.
