ZAT tournament tennis at its finest!
In a ZAT tournament over the weekend two girls were playing. They split sets and the official on the court told them (wrongly) that they were to play a 7 point tiebreak for the 3rd set. Both girls argued with the officials saying they should be playing a 10 point tiebreak but the official held his ground and made them play a 7 point tiebreak.
Player A won the tiebreak and both girls shook hands after the match and then went to report the score. When they reported their score they were told that they should have played a 10 point tiebreak for the 3rd set--and then the players were sent back to the court to play out the 10 point tiebreak. The desk person cited "official error" in justifying this ruling.
Player A then lost in the 10 point tiebreak--and now there is a very unhappy Mother out there.
BTW, they didn't exactly play a 10 point tiebreak but returned to the court and resumed play at 7-5 which was the score when Player A had won the match.
What would you have done????
7 comments:
Really?! There are officials that stupid out there? And even dumber "desk sitters"?
I hope this really didn't happen. If it did, we need to understand who in the hell trained the idiot official. In this case, the REFEREE should have been contacted. But they may be as dumb and the roving official.
The match is complete, since both players shook hands and vacated the court. End of Story.
Wow, you've got to be kidding. Once the players agree and shake hands and report the scores, even if the official led them astray, the match is over.
My comment is that some of the desk personnel think they are running the tournament. At the very least, the guy should have found the official and negotiated the correction going forward, but not back!
Well it shouldn't have happened but it did. Shake hands-match over. Doesn't matter how old they are.
Now since they we're put out there again- I'm assuming the official didn't know they were sent back out- I don't think you can reverse what was done. The desk sitters should know to involve the officials and not overrule them even though it was a wrong decision. It makes it worse to keep changing the ruling.
Its hard to count all the mistakes that were made on this one. No wonder the Mother was upset. We need to do better if we want the parents and players to trust us.
Bazinga made a good point - people are human and do make mistakes - but if the referee was never notified, the mother would have a good case to argue and be reinstated were she to have appealed to the referee. Even if he repeats the dumb mistake, at least two people were involved...
This is a case where the young girls should have asked for the referee to come to court and clarify. The official must honor that request, too bad the players did not know their rights on the court to do this.
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