One of the original rules of tennis has quietly disappeared in the Juniors draw this year for the first time, and it’s leaving spectators puzzled.
“Isn’t someone going to call that?” one fan asked courtside at the first Juniors matches on Day 8.
A serve had hit the net and landed in. The returner put it in play. Eyebrows furrowed in the stands.
Juniors have been playing let serves throughout 2018, at all levels. The ITF, the governing body of international junior tennis, instituted the change primarily to curb cheating. At most ITF tournaments, juniors referee their own matches. It’s all too easy to erase an ace by calling a let.
That’s also the reason NCAA men’s tennis adopted the rule over a decade ago. Not all matches have umpires, and even when they do, players still make their own calls. Umpires are there to overrule egregious errors. The phantom let after a missed return or untouchable serve could have had its own stat line.
The collegiate rule change didn’t cause much kerfuffle, and the same is true in the juniors. “It was a pretty tough adjustment. But at this point, I’m used to it,” said American 16-year-old Katie Volynets, the No. 15 seed.
An ITF study in the early 1990s found that 4.1 let serves occur in a best-of-three match, on average. Two played net cords went against Volynets in her 6-3, 6-4 first-round loss. At a break up and 30-all in the second set, her first serve hit the tape and popped up high. The opponent, Daria Snigur, reached it easily and hit a good approach shot. Volynets lost the point and soon dropped serve.
At 3-all, deuce, Snigur’s serve dribbled over the net, impossible to reach. She held serve.
“It stuck with me a little today,” Volynets softly admitted right after the match.
“A part of me doesn’t like the potential luck of it. Some nets are tighter, some are looser.”
In other Juniors matches this week, an umpire mistakenly called a let, and a ballkid ran out to fetch the ball. Both points had to be replayed.
Chanda Rubin, a member of the ITF junior committee, supports the attempt to improve the game but would have mixed feelings about spreading the change to the pro tours. “A part of me doesn’t like the potential luck of it,” she said. “Some nets are tighter, some are looser.” A tighter net is likely to send a hard serve into the air and give the returner plenty of time to set up, dampening the server’s advantage. A looser net tends to cause the ball to spill to the ground for a sloppy ace.
The ATP World Tour experimented with no-let serves at the Challenger level in 2013. “It ultimately did not prove popular with the players at that level,” said US Open Referee Brian Earley. “It's a topic we revisit almost every year. I am sure the subject will come up again, given that the juniors are using it.”
The pro tours don’t have a cheating problem, but tweaks are always in the wings, despite the sport’s reputation for protecting tradition. Hawk-Eye, the most radical change in the last decade, is one example. This year, the US Open allowed coaching in the qualifying rounds and a serve clock in every match. And the ATP’s inaugural Next Gen tournament last year used no-let serving and will do so again this year.
“It would not significantly speed up a match as we are talking about a couple of minutes, at the most,” said Gayle Bradshaw, the ATP Executive Vice President, Rules & Competition. “It would help the flow of the match by not having to repeat serves that are deemed to have touched the net.
“Different people have different reasons for proposing the change,” he said. “One thought is that we play the ball on every other shot when it hits the net; why not the serve? Some think it would add some entertainment value. Others feel that it would remove an element of controversy: Was it a let or not?’
The let rule has been around since 1882, by popular accounts. Perhaps that’s why its inconsistent application has never caused a stir. But if you think about it, why do let serves count if they land out yet not count if they land in? Once the ball clips the tape, luck takes over. Shouldn’t the ball be ruled either live or dead at that point, regardless of where it goes from there?
“Billie Jean King has made that point,” says Collete Lewis of Zoo Tennis, which covers the juniors.
The conventional wisdom is that let serves don’t happen enough to affect a match. An ITF survey in the late 1990s reportedly found that the average is four per match. But in her fourth-round battle with Naomi Osaka, Aryna Sabalenka served four lets within a few games alone, deep in the third set – two of them on Osaka’s first match point. One erased an ace. In that case, the replays didn’t change any outcomes. But they easily can. Just ask Katie Volynets.
“I feel bad for the juniors that they have to do that,” Osaka said of playing the unpredictable serves.
She might have to herself at some point. “For sure there will be no change on the regular tour in 2019,” Bradshaw said. “But you never know about 2020.”
