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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Long Island
Posts: 11,470
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Here is a follow-up on the issue. From The Athletic:
Quote:
Why tennis players apologize for net cords – the strangest piece of tennis etiquette
By Matthew Futterman
FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. — Of all the quirks, expectations of politesse and tennis etiquette that are supposed to be followed, the net-cord apology might be the silliest of all.
It happens in nearly every match. One player hits a shot that ticks the top of the net tape, but somehow makes it over to the other side. Sometimes it dribbles an inch or a foot, landing out of their scrambling opponent’s reach. Sometimes it kicks up and becomes a meatball that the opponent can smash for a winner. Sometimes the interference of the net throws off the trajectory only slightly; sometimes it turns a winner into an error and sometimes it does the opposite.
But all across the net-cord taxonomy, a player who wins the point thanks to one of these outcomes is expected to raise a hand in a brief gesture of apology — and they better do it while their opponent is looking. If not, hurt feelings, righteous indignation and, like Wednesday at the U.S. Open, fractious altercations can occur.
After Taylor Townsend finished off her intense 7-5, 6-1 win over No. 25-seed Jelena Ostapenko on Court 11, they met for the post-match handshake. Ostapenko tore into Townsend for not apologizing for an earlier net cord, three times appearing to tell the American, who is Black, that she has “no education.”
Ostapenko, who specializes in the tennis dark arts of delay and disruption but is also cherished by some fans for her expressiveness, surged to a first-set lead, redlining for a time as only a go-for-broke big hitter can. Townsend, the world No. 1 in doubles and increasingly a crowd favorite in U.S. tennis, couldn’t touch her for the first half-hour.
But then Ostapenko’s game came back to earth. Late in the first set, Ostapenko prepared to close into the net. Townsend fired a groundstroke that ticked the net and looped up into the air, sending Ostapenko scrambling to lever the ball over the net from just in front of it. It gave Townsend, who said she was shocked the ball went over, an easy putaway. In the heat of the moment, she celebrated her good fortune and rode the momentum into the next point and on to the victory. For Ostapenko, the perceived snub of an apology lingered to the end of the match and into the furious altercation.
The crowd howled away at the Latvian as she left the court. Townsend pointed at Ostapenko and circled her arm, urging the crowd to give her all they had.
Ostapenko quickly left the court and minutes later got in a car to leave the venue. In a series of statements posted on social media, Ostapenko said she has never been racist. She also accused Townsend of violating the rules of tennis in two ways. One, by starting their warm-up at the net, to practice volleys, instead of from the baseline. Two, for not apologizing for the good fortune of the net cord.
Neither of those behaviors is a rule. The USTA doesn’t even list the net-cord apology in its code, which players are supposed to use as a guide to fair play. And there’s no set format for the four-minute warm-up hit.
This hasn’t stopped the net cord acknowledgement from becoming one of the unwritten rules of tennis. No one really knows its origin or when it became such a big deal.
Mats Wilander, a seven-time Grand Slam champion of the 1980s, said most players did it back in his day, but a quick drive through YouTube will provide plenty of footage of apology-free net cords.
“Typically, you would hold up your racket as a gesture of recognizing your good fortune, but it was NEVER a rule,” Pam Shriver, the 21-time Grand Slam doubles champion, commentator and coach wrote in a text to The Athletic.
But there remains a simple question that comes from people who watch tennis matches for the first time, or even those who have watched and played countless tennis matches and have never felt even a hint of remorse for a bit of good fortune. Why?
After all, this is hardly a thing in any other sport. Baseball players don’t apologize when a long fly ball hits the top of the fence and bounces over for a home run. Placekickers don’t apologize when a field-goal attempt clanks off the uprights and drops behind the crossbar for three points.
In soccer and ice hockey, a shot that caroms off the iron and into the net is a work of brilliance. Soccer players even dance with the corner flag when a ball bangs off a defender into the goal. In golf, an errant tee shot that the trees throw back into the fairway is a gift from the golf gods, who are usually incredibly cruel. There is zero expectation for an apology to a playing partner.
Ever see a basketball player apologise after a 3-pointer bounces 10 feet in the air and drops through the net?
Of course not.
A few years back, Jenson Brooksby of the U.S. showed up on the pro tour without apologizing for net cords. That’s how he was taught, he said, after Fabio Fognini, hardly an arbiter of tennis decorum, berated him mid-match for not delivering a proper apology on a break point in Auckland.
“I was taught it’s not really luck-based,” Brooksby said on the court in a post-match interview.
This was considered somewhat blasphemous, even though Brooksby is right. Think about all the things players have to do to be in position to hit a ball that ticks the net, from positioning, footwork, spin and power. On the point in question between Townsend and Ostapenko, at 5-5 in the first set, Townsend hit a big serve, Ostapenko crunched the return, and from a few feet behind the line, Townsend ripped a topspin forehand.
“I honestly was, like, shocked that it was a net cord, because I was ready to play the point,” Townsend said in her news conference.
As Branch Rickey famously said, “Luck is the residue of design.”
Ostapenko, who, like any tennis player, has been on the receiving end of plenty of good fortune, didn’t think so. She stood at the net and stared at Townsend, who turned back to the baseline and moved on to the next point.
Between sets, Ostapenko reached into her bag of tricks. She took a 10-minute trip to the bathroom. In the second set, she took a medical timeout while showing no signs of injury or duress.
“I don’t pretend,” Townsend said later in reference to a question about another quirk of tennis, the mandatory post-match handshake. “I’m very straight-up. That’s one of the things that I’m very real and honest.”
In sport as in life, there is plenty of good luck and plenty of bad. Humans, grown-up ones anyway, accept that and move on.
Tennis players ought to as well.
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