Friday, October 06, 2017

To Call A Let Or Not--That Is The Question

Seems that there is a new debate among officials in the ITA officiating world and it all centers around the question is whether or not to call a service let from the chair in women's tennis.  This debate is as old as the "which came first--the chicken or the egg."  I can remember officials getting all heated up and posturing about this issue many years ago...


As the debate evolves, here are some of the issues:

*  If you call a let, are you in essence making a call for the players?
*  If you give the players time to make a let call before you interject yourself and make the call, how much time do you give them?
*  What do you do if the serve is a let, the player returns it, and then you shout "let"?
*  Even worse, what do you do if the serve is a let, the player returns it, and the other player returns that ball--and then you decide to call a let?
*  Should you just leave the whole thing alone and just call the let when the serve is a let.  Seems like this has worked for hundreds of years and is probably a good option today.
*  Should the women's ITA adopt the same rule as the ITA men and just play all service lets. 

Not sure what the final solution is but be sure to give us your comments so we can check out everyone's varied opinions...


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To avoid inadvertently calling service let’s during a DI Men’s match, I do not call service les at collegiate matches.
Most of the time, both players hear it. When only one player hears it, I will CONFIRM. In the rare instance when neither player hears, I may call it or just let them play. This procedure was suggested to me by a veteran official and has served me well. TAF