Advice to players: don’t make the game more “challenging” than it already is.

Yesterday in Stuttgart Juan Martin Del Potro served his first ball in the first set against John Millman of Australia with the game score at 0-1.  Millman won the point with a shot that landed very close to the base line.  Del Potro challenged the “in” call, but was incorrect.  Millman’s shot was on the line.  Del Potro proceeded to serve out the game.  In another match I saw several months ago, Sam Groth, who has one of the fastest serves on tour, served the very first ball of a match and the serve was called a fault.  He challenged but the call was correct.  Groth won the point on his second serve and served the game out at love.  The only impact these challenges had on the respective matches was that the players lost one of their three challenges.  The point of this story is that players frequently use their challenges very unwisely. 

We are not yet at the point where line calls can be made instantly on every shot by a Hawk eye-like device.   Instead, players are allowed only three incorrect challenges per set.  In addition, tennis is a game of winning the big points rather than the most points, and more big points occur late in sets.  Accordingly, players should make sure they have challenges available for big points.   So here is some advice to them:

If a set is on serve and neither player has yet won three games, don’t ever challenge unless the call is on a game point.  The only exception to this rule should be if the linesman made an egregiously bad call and the umpire did not overrule.  This happens very rarely.  When a set is not on serve, the player who needs to break back to stay in the set might challenge on a deuce point or in other circumstances where he feels that an overturned call greatly increases his chance to break back.  Later in sets there are more big points.  Deuce points can become important if a player is serving to get into a tiebreaker, for example. 

Players should also be aware of studies which show that challenges are more often incorrect when they involve balls landing near the baseline or service lines rather than the side lines or center line.  This point should be considered before any challenge is used.

As posted previously, I believe an “umpire’s challenge” should be made available for balls that are either clean winners or errors – for example, on service aces.  These challenges, made by the umpire, would not be charged to either player if incorrect.  This would allow more challenges per set.  Statistical studies have shown that calls are overturned by challenges about 30% of the time for men and 25% of the time for women.  That is a very high error rate for line calls, considering what is at stake.  An umpire’s challenge would allow more calls to be reviewed.  By the way, I’m not faulting the linesmen here.  I know how hard it must be to make calls with perfect accuracy when a ball is moving at 50-60 mph, a player is darting in and out of your line of sight, and the ball lands within a few millimeters of the line. 

Unless and until technology or rule changes afford players more opportunities to challenge, they should be very judicious about their use of challenges.  Players should know when they’re playing a big points, and should make sure they can review close calls in those cases.