Today we start in on the case rulings within the “Player Loses Point” section of the ITF Rules of Tennis. My hypothesis is the ITF case rulings emerged from an on-court rules dispute of epic proportions that was eventually escalated up to the ITF. I also imagine that the ITF rules committee carried a sheaf of these disputes down to the local pub and discussed them in depth over pints of beer before rendering the decisions. In related news, I volunteer to participate in any tennis rules committee that meets in a similar forum.
The first case ruling is what I think of as an edge case to the rule. It has been a minute since my engineer brain has been explicitly referenced in this forum, but remains omnipresent. In engineering, an edge case is something that happens under extreme conditions. Today’s rule is an edge case because it is the simultaneous occurrence of rare events. I have never witnessed or heard of this situation actually happening.
Case 1: After the server has served a first service, the racket falls out of the server’s hand and touches the net before the ball has bounced. Is this a service fault, or does the server lose the point?
Decision: The server loses the point because the racket touches the net while the ball is in play.
USTA Friend at Court, ITF Rules of Tennis, Section 24
I am not sure the proper word is “fall.” In order to reach the baseline from the legal position of the service delivery, the racquet would have to be flung or hurled from the hand in order to cover that horizontal distance.
I can recall exactly one dramatic instance of the racquet slipping from my hand when delivering a serve. On a very humid day, I lost my grip on the racquet on downward follow through of my service motion. It was like spiking a football after a touchdown. At no point was my racquet anywhere near the net.
As a side note, that loss of grip resulting in a racquet spike cracked the frame. At the time, the umpire I gave birth to was in her late teens and she asked me if I would buy it if she came home with a cracked frame and that story. The answer was absolutely not. Fortunately it was a league match and I had a lot of witnesses.
Going back to the actual rule, this is a case where the timing is important. It does not matter where the ball bounces if the racquet touches the net first because the ball is in play, thus the player loses the point. Tomorrow’s case ruling covers other sequences of those events.
Somewhat related to this discussion is if the service strikes the server’s partner. There is actually another rule that takes precedence in that situation which I previously wrote about in “The Service Fault: Fratricide.” That case was also recently written about in Rebel Good’s “Court of Appeals” column in the current edition of Tennis magazine. In that case the serve is a fault.
I can see the logic that drives the need for this particular case ruling. As a preview, the impetus for some of the other case rulings and comments are not nearly as apparent.
- United States Tennis Association (2020) Friend at Court. White Plains, NY
- “The Golden Rule,” Rebel Good, Tennis Magazine, May/June 2020.
