Every Wednesday, this site examines a rule or governing principle that shapes how tennis is actually played. We are currently in the midst of a sequential walkthrough of The Code, exploring one principle at a time as it appears within the USTA’s Friend at Court. After spending a little more time than originally planned on Principle 12, we are finally ready to move forward. Principle 13 immediately presents another complication because it contradicts something I expressed earlier in the series.
Player calls own shots out. With the exception of the first serve, a player should call out the player’s own shots if the player clearly sees the ball out regardless of whether requested to do so by an opponent. The prime objective in making calls is accuracy. All players should cooperate to attain this objective.
USTA Friend at Court 2026 , The Code, Principle 13
When we examined Principle 11, I raised the question of whether a player who clearly sees one of their own shots land out has any obligation to volunteer that information when the opponent calls it good. At the time, I concluded that Principle 11 did not answer the question. That was technically correct as far as Principle 11 was concerned, but I had not yet looked far enough ahead.
Principle 13 answers it explicitly. If you clearly see your own shot land out, The Code says you should call it out. Your opponent does not need to ask for your opinion. In fact, the phrase “regardless of whether requested to do so by an opponent” is specifically designed to eliminate that distinction. This is not merely permission to correct an opponent’s call. It establishes an affirmative responsibility to do so.
That is considerably different from how I described my own behavior when we discussed Principle 11. I wrote that if an opponent played one of my close shots as good when I believed it had landed just out, I generally would not volunteer that information unless asked. My reasoning was that responsibility for making the call belonged to the opponent. Principle 13 makes it clear that my interpretation was incomplete. I suspect I am hardly alone.
Calling one of your own shots out is not a particularly common occurrence in recreational tennis, especially when the ball is close. Players routinely call their own shots when they miss by several feet, sometimes before the ball even lands, but that is a very different situation from overruling an opponent who has just played a close ball as good. The latter requires a player to affirmatively surrender a point that the opponent was prepared to concede.
The social dynamics are complicated in doubles and team competition. A singles player who gives away a point is accountable only for their own result. A doubles player is also making that decision on behalf of a partner, while a league player may feel some responsibility toward an entire team. I suspect many partners and captains would be less than enthusiastic if a player routinely overruled favorable calls from opponents. The formal expectation established by The Code and the informal expectations surrounding competitive team tennis do not necessarily align.
Yet Principle 13 does not leave much ambiguity about which consideration should prevail. The following sentence may be the most important one in the entire principle: “The prime objective in making calls is accuracy.“
That statement helps explain why The Code assigns responsibility beyond the player whose side of the court received the ball. In self-officiated tennis, every player is simultaneously a competitor and a participant in the officiating system. Most of the time those roles coexist without difficulty. Principle 13 addresses one of the circumstances where they come into conflict. If you possess information that establishes the correct call, accuracy takes precedence over the competitive advantage of remaining silent.
There is also an important limitation embedded in the principle. The obligation arises when a player “clearly sees” their own ball out. Principle 13 does not require players to speculate about close shots, substitute their uncertain perspective for an opponent’s call, or manufacture doubt where none exists. The same standards surrounding certainty that we have encountered throughout The Code continue to apply. The difference is that once certainty exists, the fact that the information disadvantages you does not make it irrelevant.
Principle 13 is considerably more demanding than it initially appears. Much of The Code asks players to give opponents the benefit of uncertainty. Here, there is no uncertainty. The player knows what happened, and the ethical obligation arises precisely because the opponent does not.
Interestingly, this expectation is not a modern addition to The Code. The 2001 version we have been using as a historical reference imposes essentially the same obligation, with the substantive principle surviving intact for at least the past 25 years. The most conspicuous changes are editorial updates to gender-neutral language. That eliminates any theoretical argument that only men were required to surrender points against their own interests.
The longevity of Principle 13 makes the disconnect between written and unwritten tennis culture even more interesting. This is not a recently introduced standard that players simply have not absorbed. The expectation has been sitting in The Code for decades, even though actual behavior on recreational courts often suggests a very different convention.
Perhaps that is what makes Principle 13 particularly impactful. The written rules and the unwritten culture of tennis usually reinforce one another. Here, they diverge. The Code tells us that accuracy is the prime objective and that players should volunteer information even when doing that costs them a point. Competitive culture often sends a different message. (I am bookmarking the divergence between the competitive culture of tennis and the aspirational culture of tennis sportsmanship as fertile ground for future posts. )
Next week, we will examine the conspicuous exception contained in the very first sentence of Principle 13. Players are expected to call their own shots out, except on the first serve. That exception deserves considerably more attention than the few words devoted to it might suggest.
- Friend at Court: The Handbook of Tennis Rules and Regulations, USTA, 2026
- Friend at Court: The USTA Handbook of Tennis Rules and Regulations, USTA, 2001. (Hardcopy.)
