Tangotiger Blog

Interesting and all fine and dandy in theory.  I wonder how this would be best implemented.  Do you have a shot clock judge and when does the clock start?

Problems that would need to be ironed out.

1. Do you start the clock when the previous point is over or when the person serving has 2+ balls in their possession?  It seems like you would have to wait for the server to have the balls as part of the delay is often the ball boys/girls picking up balls, getting in position throwing balls to the person serving.  And then it seems like the clock could be milked by waiting longer to ask for balls.  I’m sure it could be worked out but many things to take into consideration.

2. Sometimes you wait for a gust of wind to end or you make a bad toss on a serve or you toss the ball in the sun or someone in the crowd yells and you stop.

3. How do you judge when the person serves right as the clock expires?  Does a buzzer sound?  What if the buzzer sounds and the serve beat the buzzer like it often does in a basketball shot clock?  Loud buzzer as contact is about to be made on a serve is a “no-no”. 

4.  Is it reviewable?  If so, how long does the review take?

I think the best solution is to just use common sense and have the judge enforce a reasonable time limit based off of the many things that happen in between points in a tennis match.

I played competitive tennis (but not with line judges) and it is annoying as hell to have someone take forever in between points to serve.  It is usually done on purpose as gamesmanship or the person has an obsessive compulsive disorder of having to go pick up all three balls before they will serve.

Unless something has changed, judges already have the discretion to issue a delay-of-game warning between points.

It’s loosely based on 30 seconds, with obvious allowances for extreme temperatures, a serve after a very long point, excess crowd noise, etc.

First it’s a warning, then a point lost, then a game. This call was uncommon but not rare in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I can’t recall anyone ever reaching the third level of a game lost.

The call was almost always controversial, and an argument usually proceeded it.

In a long match, this would make a Nadal match about half an hour (extra 10 seconds per service point) longer than a Federer match. Put two slow players together, and there’s an extra hour. Yeah, that’s a problem.

This seems to be another example of trying to fix something that is only broken because the officials aren’t enforcing the rule in the first place. This is actually almost exactly the same issue in golf with pace of play, and I’ve seen a shotclock proposed there are well (discussed here?). I think it makes more sense in golf, since “your turn” is very clearly defined, but it would be workable in tennis too once it was codified. In both cases, it would be better if the officials were enforcing the rule and rarely letting it go when it seemed appropriate to them (a soccer-esque model), rather than rarely enforcing it.

The problem with a shot clock is it makes it tough to have grey areas, like gusts of wind or a long punishing point that merits a bit of extra time. I don’t know if tennis has a TV sponsor that could bring pressure to bear here - unlike extra time outs in basketball or extra pitcher changes in baseball, this is simply dead air time with no ads being sold, and networks generally prefer events end on a more predictable schedule.