Great Article About One Of Our Own

Lynn Welch

Lynn Welch is by no means famous. She knows this, and likes it that way. She is slightly embarrased when people call her name out on the grounds of tournaments, asking to take a picture with her or have her sign an autograph. She obliges when away from the courts, but when she is nearby, she politely declines.

But the notoriety -- however big or small -- has been dutifully earned. For the past 18 years, Welch, a Maine native, has worked the professional tennis circuit as a chair umpire, earning Gold Badge status, the highest of ratings for a working professional in her field.

I meet Lynn on Day 10 of the Open, while rain spits steadily outside of Louis Armstrong Stadium. She is underneath in a tucked-away corner, with a group of umpires, some of who are playing cards to pass time. "I'll be in white pants and a navy blue sweater," she told me earlier on the phone. "OK," I think. "But so will everyone else you're around."

I don't need to know what Welch is wearing because I've seen her before, of course, working tour matches, including the US Open final last year between Kim Clijsters and Vera Zvonareva. She has worked over 10 Grand Slam finals and various other semifinals, oftentimes the choice because of her experience, especially when no American player has reached that match (just another precaution for neutrality).

Welch is known by fans at home, as well as those at tournaments. Her voice has been a steady force -- literally -- in the chair for nearly 20 years, and she's been under contract with the WTA for the last three years since earning her Gold Badge in 2003.

"My friends will say that when they're in their kitchen they'll hear me in the living room and know that I'm on -- they'll hear me before they see me," Welch says, laughing a little. "Someone told me I should go into doing voice-over work... for some reason a lot of people will say they love my voice in the chair. They say they enjoy the clarity of it."

I enjoy it, too, and half expected Welch to great me by saying "Deuce" or "Advantage, Roddick." But she doesn't, instead saying hello with a warm smile and dutifully setting out to determine a spot where we can go and talk.

We walk through the underbelly of Louis Armstrong Stadium and make our way to an office in Grandstand, where Welch greets familiar faces along the way. She begins telling me about working her way up from being a linesperson and Bronze and Silver Badge umpire to eventually sitting where she is today.

I can't help but wonder about crazy moments on court, asking her what she's seen and experienced over the last two decades.

In 2003, Welch worked a third-round US Open match between Ai Sugiyama and Francesca Schiavone that was delayed over four days. On the fourth day, the players had only been on court for a few minutes when Welch felt a ball hit her in the side of the head -- an errant throw by a ball person.

"I went to the microphone to say the score and thwop! It hit me in the side of the head and knocked my glasses to the ground off the chair," Welch recalls. "I realized I was bleeding and noticed that the players hadn't seen what happened. I had to yell out for them to wait for me, "Wait!"

"Ai Sugiyama walked over and made me an ice pack ... but all I could think was it was day four of this match and I was another delay." Welch was able to start up again, but the rain started up again itself, stopping the match 10 minutes later.

If blood didn't stop Welch, neither would a broken ankle on another occasion, she says.

"I got down to check a ball mark and just missed one of the rungs of the ladder," she recalls. "The first thing I thought was, 'I broke my ankle' ... but I got up and kept going."

Later in the match, when Welch went to check another mark, someone yelled, "Don't get down!" The crowd laughed, she says, but the players wouldn't let her get down. Instead, they checked the marks themselves.

Welch's perseverance has seen her through a system of peer review, where umpires will be assigned to help each other along by watching one another's matches and giving feedback on how each other did.

"We may tell each other, 'You could have tried this,' or ask, 'How did you feel about this?'" she says. "Those reviews go to the ITF. We do it at all the Grand Slams. You can always learn from how you did."

Welch often watches her matches on tape afterwards, critiquing the way she handled confrontations or made certain overrules. "I have high expectations of my performance on and off the court. You have to be yourself but you don't want to do something that will get people talking. You have to present a professional demeanor on the court."

Her memory is uncanny. The bleeding match? Sugiyama and Schiavone. And when she broke her ankle in 2001? That was Jenny Hopkins and Lisa Raymond.

The meticulousness about Welch is not too surprising, it is her job to pay attention to details. She has a method to how she approaches each and every match. She always tries to be aware of the whole court's surrounding, use preventative umpiring to temper what could be contentious situations and, her advice to up and coming umpires? "Make sure your umpire bag is packed for the day," she says, "there's nothing more embarrassing than forgetting something when you're on court."

On the rainy Wednesday afternoon, Welch is waiting for the rain to subside, having been moved to the first match on instead of the second. She notes that she hasn't seen the players much during the Open ("this is one of the bigger tournaments"), but that she usually just says a passing hi -- no out to drinks or dinner with their families. And what does she love about it all? "I love my job. I love that I get to travel."

On our way under Armstrong Stadium I wonder if anyone will recognize Welch, but she stops short with a group of groundspeople, not for autographs but to get an update on when play might start.

"[It] makes me chuckle. Just because people see me on TV they think I'm famous, but I'm just a normal person," she says, throwing her small black umpire's bag over her shoulder. "But it makes me feel good, too, when they say something like, 'You're my favorite umpire.' It gives me a smile for the day."