Many years ago, I was playing in the National Senior Women’s Clay Court Championships in Houston when I managed to net what should have been a fairly routine sitter. That… is not as unusual as I would like it to be, but what happened next was. After the point ended, my opponent asked whether a ball that had rolled onto our court from an adjacent match had distracted me. She generously offered to replay the point.
I told her that I had never seen the ball and declined the offer. At the time, I reasoned that something I did not see could not have distracted me, so there was no legitimate reason to replay a point I had lost entirely on my own. I refused her generosity.
However, Principle 17 also says a lot about that situation. This week, we are considering the second paragraph of that principle. It clearly articulates another reason I was not entitled to a do-over.
Prompt calls eliminate two chance option. A player must make all calls promptly. A call must be made either before the player’s return shot has gone out of play or before an opponent has had an opportunity to play the return shot.
Prompt calls will quickly eliminate the “two chances to win the point” option that some players practice. To illustrate, a player is advancing to the net for an easy put away and sees a ball from an adjoining court rolling toward the court. The player continues to advance and hits the shot, only to have the supposed easy put away fly over the baseline. The player then claims a let. The claim is not valid because the player forfeited the right to call a let by choosing instead to play the ball. The player took a chance to win or lose and is not entitled to a second chance.
USTA Friend at Court 2001, The Code, Principle 17
The example in Principle 17 is remarkably close to what happened in my match, except that I never saw the encroaching ball. That makes my situation directly straightforward. I could hardly claim that something I knew nothing about interfered with my ability to play the point.
However, even if I had seen it, I still had no legitimate claim. Principle 17 tells us that I could not continue toward the sitter, hit the ball into the net, and then decide that the stray ball entitled me to a second chance. Seeing the opportunity to call a let gave me the option to stop play. Continuing would have been a choice to play the point despite that.
The problem is not really the stray ball. It is the optionality created if players are allowed to postpone their decision until they know the outcome. If my sitter lands for a winner, I take the point. If I miss it, I invoke the stray ball and replay the point. Either way, I have protected myself against the consequence of the shot I chose to hit. That is what The Code means by “two chances to win the point.”
Oddly enough, I encountered the other side of this principle at the same tournament in Houston in a different year. In that match, I hit a clean winner just as a ball from an adjacent court was making its way toward the back corner of ours. The stray ball was nowhere near the play. In fact, as I remember it, it hadn’t even reached our court when I struck my shot.
An official came running over from an adjacent court and called a let a couple of seconds after the point had ended.
This time, I had successfully played the point, and an official decided afterward that we should replay it. The effect was to give my opponent exactly what Principle 17 says a player is not entitled to receive: a second chance after the first opportunity had already produced a result.
I made it very clear to the official that her ruling was flat-out wrong. However, I was ahead 40-love at the time and decided that calling the referee over a single point probably wasn’t worth the trouble. I agreed to replay it. That was a practical decision. Sometimes being right about a rule and deciding how much effort to expend proving it are separate questions.
Years later, I attended a USTA Texas meeting and sat in on the Officials Committee. I recognized that same official and discovered that she held a role involving officiating education and training for the Section. Fun times.
The two Houston incidents were different, but the underlying principle is the same. In the first, I lost the point and declined an opportunity for another chance. In the second, I won the point, but an official gave my opponent another chance anyway.
Principle 17 is indifferent to the outcome, because a rule that depended on that would create exactly the incentive problem it is trying to prevent. Players would have reason to continue whenever the point looked promising while retaining the interruption as insurance against an unfavorable result.
The solution is to require the decision before the outcome is known. If a stray ball or some other circumstance covered by the rule causes you to stop play, stop. If you choose to continue, you are accepting the consequences of continuing. Sometimes the sitter goes into the net. Sometimes the shot is a clean winner.
You do not get to find out which one happened before deciding whether you wanted the let.
- 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.)
