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Rabid tennis fans, no comment on?
Posted By: Stick In Response To: Rabid tennis fans, no comment on? (Chuck Bower)
Date: Sunday, 5 June 2011, at 6:23 a.m.
As Bill mentioned, we have discussed it on Facebook a bit. I didn't go fully into it because it was Facebook and I never know nor care to find out where the character limit is. Since I have no limit here let me expand on what I said on Facebook.
First off you need to understand what a clay court is. Whether it's HAR-TRU or real down to earth French red clay the ball leaves marks when it hits. (even more so as hard as they hit) I never did get over to the west side of Paris to go to Roland Garros when I was there but I did play in a club with real French clay while living in Tours. I imagine that the court is dragged fresh between every crossover at the French Open. This means that there won't be many marks on the surface because they will only collect for at most two games. I am currently playing on HAR-TRU and even without dragging the court during the match almost all marks are distinguishable.
Was the ball in or out? The mark. It looks to me from this picture where Schiavone circled the mark herself, that the ball very well could have been in. It doesn't really matter to me though...it's one call. Schiavone acknowledged herself after the match that while she disagreed it was no longer her job to sit there and bitch, it wouldn't have helped. Her job was to go out there and get her head back in the game and try to win the set. She failed miserably after that call losing the last 8 points and the match.
We live in the modern spoiled world of instant replays and more and more calls in every sport being disputed and corrected when necessary. I do prefer to have the right call but something like this, even at an important moment in the match, does not the match define. Remember the days of tennis before the electronic challenge system, they weren't that long ago. There were lots of missed calls back in the day and we aren't going to put an asterisk in the history book because one call is disputable. That's why people like McEnroe went over the top sometimes because the wrong call was made, upheld, and there was nothing they could do about it. It's miles better now and if one or two calls are wrong so be it.
Bill went on Facebook to question the chair umpire's call suggesting basically that the French don't like Italians and she may have been biased. All I have to say to that is that the umpire who made the ruling is Louise Engzell and she's Swedish.
Stick
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