Scoring Disputes in Tennis Matches

Carolyn 0:09

Hi , this is Carolyn , and I'm here with Erin and we are going to talk about scoring disputes . I mean , this is what , the time when people are going to playoffs , this is when matches , I guess , matter a little more , and some people have asked us about scoring disputes . Have you had a lot of scoring disputes , erin ?

Erin 0:26

I haven't had a lot , but I'm sure , like you , because you play singles , it's a little bit harder in singles because sometimes you just truly forget the score if you've played you know , played out a lot of long points .

Erin 0:39

It happens a little bit less in doubles , but I feel like sometimes , when it happens in doubles , there might even be like not more reason for people to get in arguments , but because there's more personalities on the court . Yes , I've had a few matches that I've either seen myself in person or been on a court where it's happened , where if someone's questioned the score it could just be like what did you say the score was ? Or you know , not necessarily like I don't believe that you said the right score or I'm disputing the score , but just literally like I didn't hear what you said . Then it tends to like , like you said , especially during playoffs and matches that people think really count , you know , for whatever reason playoffs , or you know , I don't know any other reason but I do feel like with four personalities on the court , even though it might be a little bit easier to keep track of the score with four people , sometimes those are the ones that actually get more heated because there's a lot of people to argue about the score .

Erin 1:40

Yes , that's right , yeah , yeah , don't you feel that way ? Have you had that at all ?

Carolyn 1:45

You know , to be honest , I have more scoring disputes in singles and not in doubles . And I feel like it's because there are more people on the court .

Erin 1:52

Yeah .

Carolyn 1:53

Everybody kind of can go through it together , or you don't forget any points , you don't forget the double faults , right , that's been my experience . But how do you handle it ? How do you handle scoring disputes ?

Erin 2:03

Well , you know how I handle it . I try to be extremely friendly and understanding and I try to go through point . You know like you do try to recall . You know this happened and then that happened . The problem is again with singles . That's much harder if you've had a long point and sometimes and oftentimes people remember certain points of like . I'm sure this has happened to you a bunch of times if there has been a dispute .

Erin 2:28

But sometimes someone will go well , remember that point , and then this happened , and then you hit it here and I'm like that was the last game .

Carolyn 2:34

Yes .

Erin 2:35

You know , sometimes you only remember points from other games , right , so that's tough , but I always , always try to be friendly because that's just the type of player I am .

Erin 2:44

I have and I think I've said it on our podcast before I have had a woman scream at me because she she called the score two times .

Erin 2:53

That I thought was incorrect and , honestly , the second time that it happened , when she really blew up at me , was we had played on a long point . It was doubles . We had played on a long point and I remember , before starting that point , I was thinking because we had already been broken . So I remember specifically thinking , if we win this point , then we will break back and then we'll be at you know , a different , like I knew the game score . And so when she called the score out and it was like 40 , 30 for them instead of 40 , 30 for you know , 40 , 30 for us and I questioned her on it , I was pretty sure I was right , because I remember thinking if we win this point , then we've broken back or we've gotten to do so , whatever it was . And when she called the score wrong and I questioned , that's when she just blew up and started screaming at me Like other people came from other courts to see what was going on .

Erin 3:41

Yeah , and that's hard , that's hard , and I tried to diffuse that situation because I do not like to get an arguments on the court , but she kind of had had a really bad day and just kind of blew up .

Carolyn 3:53

So did you give it to her ? Did you let her decide the score ?

Erin 3:56

Did . What did you do ? I think we did . I think because we couldn't go back and you know we couldn't remember the first point and I said to her I said I really think it's blah blah because of , you know , we thought we were going to break back and she just stood her ground like argue , argue , argue , like there was no way . I think that day of her life , like she was just in such a mood , I don't think that we could have convinced her otherwise and I think my partner and I just decided it's not worth it and we just backed down , right .

Carolyn 4:24

That's normally what I do too .

Erin 4:26

Yeah , didn't we just talk to someone ? We did . We just talked to a guest that said this sort of happened to her , and she ended up giving the woman the game that the woman argued about , and then she still ended up beating her , and so then she said I basically won the match twice .

Carolyn 4:43

Yes , yes , right yeah , because if it's game difference , I mean that's a huge difference , that's two games .

Erin 4:50

Really right and I know that happened to you at Tate's .

Carolyn 4:52

Yeah , that's happened to me before , where she asked if she could change the scoreboard because she had had issues in the past with people changing the scoreboard the wrong way . And then that's exactly what happened at stage . Yeah , and every switch that the wrong way , she switched it the wrong way and then , when I questioned her , she said look at the scoreboard .

Erin 5:10

Yeah , I will tell you . That's exactly what happened with the woman who blew up at me . She told me at the end of the match , when she apologized , that the reason she got so angry with me asking her the score a few times was because she had played a match the day before and a woman had questioned her several times on the score , and so she said I didn't stick up for myself , so I felt like she had to fight anybody from then on that was going to not accuse her of the wrong score but question her on it . And my thought at the end of that was like a woman yesterday asked you I thought you were calling the score wrong . Today we thought you were calling the score wrong .

Erin 5:48

You might be calling the score wrong , right , exactly , exactly . But we did . We backed down because I was like it got so heated and it was so uncomfortable and it was at our club . It could have been at any club and I still would have backed down . Because that's just , you don't want to put yourself in that situation . It's adult rec tennis .

Carolyn 6:04

Right , right , it's getting paid . Right , yeah , and it happens . I feel like it happens pretty rarely , so that when it does happen , you are kind of taking it back by it .

Erin 6:13

Yeah , and it kind of stands out right Because it's like those ugly situations and to be honest , I didn't really know the USTA rule on it .

Carolyn 6:20

So I looked at the rule and I don't think people do it this way . But OK , so in front of court I'm going to read it to you and you tell me if you've ever done it this way , ok , or how you normally do it , ok . So this is on page 41 of Friend of Court .

Erin 6:34

Friend of Court . First of all is more than 41 pages . Oh , it's really long . I thought that was like the quick guide , isn't there like a one page or two page quick guide to the rules ?

Carolyn 6:46

I don't know . If there is , let me know , because .

Erin 6:49

I love the one to .

Carolyn 6:50

But there's only like a few pages that are applicable to us , because there's like rules on how long the tennis court should be . Oh , yeah , or like the measurements , like who cares about measurements ?

Erin 7:01

If I had been , if I was asked that question in jeopardy , I would get it wrong .

Carolyn 7:06

Yes , I know I have no idea . Yeah , I have no idea either , but just in case anybody is looking , this is on page 41 of Friend of Court and it's number 32 . And it's actually labeled disputes . So this is what . This is what we're supposed to do .

Carolyn 7:19

I guess I've never done it . I always just back down , like unless I can recall every single point and get them to agree to it . Then I'm kind of like , ok , ok , so it says disputes OK , disputes over the score must be resolved by using one of the following methods , which are listed in the order of preference . Ok , so this is the first way they tell you to do it , which is , count all points and games agreed upon by the players and replay only disputed points or games .

Erin 7:47

But usually only the last point is disputed . What does that mean ? I guess you would replay it right . So you would just replay that point . So let's say you remembered the point before was deuce , right ? But then you're disputing , hmm , or are you ? You'd have ?

Carolyn 8:05

to agree that we were at deuce and she thinks it's add in , I think it's add out , and so the point we I guess we agreed on was at deuce , and then I mean that's going to be hard Okay . So then the next way is play from a score mutually agreeable to all players , which I think is what we do , which is we just back down and we say fine , it's 40 , 15 . You right , yeah , if we don't you truly agreeable .

Erin 8:35

Yeah , it's a stretch , but yes , yeah , you've just decided that it's not worth it . It's not worth it .

Carolyn 8:40

Yeah , right , okay . And then the last one is spin a racket or toss a coin . Yes , this is the one we just talked about . Yeah , yeah , has anyone ever done this ? I wanted to , you ever done it ?

Erin 8:50

I have never seen it , but I actually did know that rule , um and it . This is when I think it comes into play and I hate to think it would be like a .

Disputing Tennis Scores and Resolving Conflicts

Erin 9:00

My guess is when these are really disputed and you get to spinning a racket . I mean , I guess it could be a nice situation , but it also could be like I absolutely positively will not agree that that is the score you know type of situation with with an opponent . So to me I think it's funny after all that time of , I would imagine it takes a little while to kind of go through like well , I remember this point , well , no , she did that , and then your partner did that and you know having a full conversation about it . I can't imagine all of a sudden someone's like you know what , let's just spin a racket . Yeah , I know right , that's going to solve it and we're all going to feel good about that .

Carolyn 9:36

Right , um , but I guess that's what happens I guess I mean let us let us know if that's ever happened to you .

Carolyn 9:43

Um if that's where you , you got to , or if you just backed down , or if the other person just backed down . I okay , I remember . So I was at six , five states so this was a couple of years ago , cause I think I was a three O and there was a court beside us that was much better than us , um , so it was probably eight , five , I don't know , but they were much better than our court . But we were pros . They looked yeah , they looked like pros compared to what I was doing .

Carolyn 10:06

But anyway , we started a game and they were arguing over the score . They were like no , it's this , it's not that . So I waited a second to see , but then they all came to the net . This was in doubles . They all came to the net and I was like , well , I better go ahead and start the game , like I was serving . Well , we finished that game and they were still arguing over it and I remember at one point someone said I'm not lying and then the person on the other team said well , I didn't say you were lying , I'm saying you're wrong and I was . I don't know what eventually happened .

Carolyn 10:40

Um but we actually finished our match with them , kind of . Still it was the last game of the set , but kind of finished the match and they were still , kind of you know , talking about it . So maybe they should have just spun the rocket .

Erin 10:53

Yeah , oh yeah , exactly . They would have moved things along and then they were probably all kind of rattled or thrown off after that . Anyway , right , you kind of want to move along and get to it . I remember a story of a teammate at our club who played I guess she played a . She must have played . It was a singles match . She played a singles match .

Erin 11:12

This was years ago . She played a singles match . She shook hands at the net with her opponent . She had won the match . She went home she lives really close to the club . She went home , got in the shower , got out of the shower and realized that she had had a call from her captain , so called her back within you know a few minutes and said hey , you know , she thought her captain just wanted to talk about the match and the captain said you're the opponent . The woman that you just played said you didn't really win the match . She remembered the score differently . Oh my goodness , at that point I'm sure there's a rule in the rule book that says if you have shaken hands , right , you've walked off the court , you've gone home and taken a shower . I think the shower too , I mean you got to add that .

Carolyn 11:55

I mean there is a rule . I found that yeah .

Erin 11:58

Comparable to spinning a racket and just deciding that that's a little nutty . Yeah , that's crazy .

Carolyn 12:04

I think once you leave .

Erin 12:05

Yeah , what's the rule ? Say it's got to be once you walk off the court .

Carolyn 12:06

This is on page 38 at Friend of Court . On the code it says shaking hands at the end of a match is an acknowledgement by the players that the match is over . Yes , so that's really interesting , because that just happened to one of our friends who was playing a match and it was a match tie break , same sort of situation , and they kind of , you know , they were talking about the score , they agreed on the score and then , during the match , tie break .

Erin 12:31

I remember During the match tie break they were going over points because someone would have to use one word they agreed to it .

Carolyn 12:37

She played the final point , match was over and then everybody left the court . Well , then she comes running , her opponent comes running up to her and says hey , I talked to my teammates , that score is wrong , Right , and she was just like no , it's not , you know that's so awkward . It's such an awkward situation at that point because I mean , what do they want you to do ? Go back on and play it Right .

Erin 12:59

Oh , let me grab my racket and run back on the court . Yeah , everything too that I will say about that and it has to do with this situation specifically . But I've had this happen before where people from other courts have tried to intervene into someone else's match , which they cannot do . They can't do that , but that's the same thing . Is her team like ? She agreed to it , she shook hands , she walked off the court . Then , when her teammates told her differently like it's not the teammates match , it was her responsibility . Even if it was wrong , it was her responsibility to fix it . Before she shook hands and left the court . Right , I would have not run back up to my opponent . I would have just said , oh my gosh , are you serious ? Like I messed that up . You know , yeah , but she yeah . That's a little strange .

Carolyn 13:41

But she was really our friend , was really happy that she had someone watching the match too . Yes , that could say , no , you guys are right , this was the score , right , this was the last like that was able to relay the last four points and then she was kind of like , okay , but still , it's really really awkward .

Erin 13:57

Yeah to need a second opinion . Yeah To need a second opinion . That the score is correct is a little bit strange .

Carolyn 14:04

Yeah , I think so too . So I would love , I would love to hear .

Erin 14:06

Now that you know the rules .

Carolyn 14:07

Are you still just going to back down ? Are you going to do anything differently ? Well , are you just going to ? Probably going to back .

Erin 14:12

I mean , if somebody , if it's really like crazy yeah , I'm not going to be like you know what , Now that you're really heated , let's spin a racket and see who wins . Who wins the argument , after all . That .

Carolyn 14:22

If you're at the roll , we actually need to spin a racket . That's what we're going to do .

Erin 14:26

On page 41, . I'm going to bust out the rule .

Carolyn 14:29

Well , I think also . But you know , what it made me realize too is when the situation happened to me , and it has happened to others . I mean , even this year we've had friends say look , somebody said , no , the scoreboard's different than what they thought it was . It's to really , you know , call the score out loud and look at the scoreboard and make sure , because I've not had an issue since that , and I'm always . I stop people when I'm said can you say the score again ?

Erin 14:55

I'm sorry , I didn't hear you because of that , which makes me feel kind of weird and people do think you're questioning the score when you're just questioning . I didn't hear it , or you just want to agree that that's the score at that time ?

Carolyn 15:11

Yeah , but I'm probably still going to back down , and just I know me too . If you'd like to see an unedited version of us doing this podcast , please check out our YouTube channel , which is Second Serve Podcast . Thanks so much for listening and hope to see you on the courts soon .