Steve,
I think you were too hard on the players yesterday when you wrote about the time rule. How do they know when 25 seconds is up, or when they’re getting close? You said that the chair umpire told them to ask him if they were getting close, but are they supposed to do that every game? Now they could be penalized before they even find out they were close to the edge.—Karen
You’re right, that's a problem for the players. It seems that the ATP, or at least its chair umpires, recognized that when they had Cedric Mourier tell David Ferrer and Dustin Brown to ask him if they were getting close to 25 seconds. But as you say, that isn’t an ideal solution.
What is? Telling them to wear a watch? That might not be something they want to do while they play, even if they could get a sponsorship deal for it. And checking it before every point is not going to help with their concentration.
This is a where a shot clock might help, but as I wrote yesterday, I don’t think that’s the right move for tennis, and it would be even worse for a player’s concentration. One answer is for the players to practice their rituals and tempo and make sure they’re well within 25 seconds. Another, if it proves to be a problem, would be to have chair umpires issue two warnings, instead of one, before they take away a first serve.
Incidentally, I had a junior opponent who wore a watch during matches, and deliberately delayed being ready to play, sometimes even when he was receiving, until the 30-second mark on the dot (that’s how much time we had between points when I was a teenager). It drove his opponents, or at least me, insane. I can remember standing with my hands on my hips at the baseline watching him wander around the back of the court and sneak peaks at his watch. It drove you even crazier when he finally served, you missed the return, and you knew that you had to wait another full 30 seconds to take another swing. All of which, of course, made you tense up and miss more often. It was, if nothing else, a good early lesson in the benefits of tempo control on a tennis court. I think it has also made me dislike watching or playing slow-paced tennis ever since.