There was a lot to like at Roland Garros on Sunday, a lot of great shots, a lot of sun, a lot of color, a lot of superb sunglasses, a lot of thin women with dark hair and white jeans passing in the other direction. But the highlight of the day for me didn’t involve any players or fans. It involved a chair umpire.
I don’t know her name, but she was working the match between Ernests Gulbis and Julien Benneteau on Court Suzanne Lenglen. You don’t often see women working men’s matches, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone. There were no arguments between her and either of the players. But that doesn’t mean there was no reaction to her presence at all—she was young and not unattractive, and this was a French crowd. In the middle of the first set, she was called down to the court to inspect a mark on Benneteau’s side of the court. She clambered down, smiling slightly, with her index finger already pointing in the air to indicate that the ball was out. That pose, which was more cheerful than authoritative, combined with her pinned-back long brown hair and casual pants-and-shirt umpire's uniform, seemed to provoke the crowd’s interest. When she bent down to point at the mark, whistles went up all over the arena. She kept smiling, and the whistles in the crowd turned to giggles.
What did this moment prove? That the French are sexist? That they have a sense of humor? In its cheeky way, it also showed the appeal of getting the chair umpire involved in checking ball marks, a tradition that's unique to clay. There are some ditch-the-past types, most prominently Brad Gilbert, who want the Hawk-Eye line-calling system to be used at clay events. Yes, a computer would presumably do the job a tiny bit more reliably, and it does defuse arguments more efficiently. Yes, there are times when there’s no mark at all. And yes, the ball-mark system does give a slight advantage to the player on the same side of the court as the mark; he or she can circle what he thinks is the correct spot and possibly influence the chair umpire into choosing the wrong one. But we’ve also seen occasions when the umpire ends up studying the mark and ruling against the circler. It's also not impossible for a player to disagree with a Hawk-Eye call and believe the mark they see on a hard court instead, as Roger Federer did in last year’s U.S. Open final. Plus, there are no limits to their challenges; every player is free to inspect any mark he wishes.
I would hate to see a French Open final turn on a botched mark check, but my argument in favor of keeping the system isn’t about fairness as much as it about honor. It’s a word that used to be deeply embedded in tennis, and in theory it still is at the recreational level, where players must call their own lines. In an ideal tennis world, you’re supposed to make calls against yourself—say, if you get to the ball on two bounces or see that you’ve hit it wide—even if your opponent has called it in your favor. To do otherwise is the equivalent of cheating. There was an unwritten code of sportsmanship in the amateur game, most famously and beautifully articulated by 1930s champion Gottfried von Cramm, who insisted that players not argue calls because it would mean showing up the line judges (wow, the world has changed, hasn’t it?).
The generally accepted concept of honor in the pro game now is much like that of other sports: The umpires are paid to make the calls—see the words of Fernando Gonzalez after his match against James Blake at the 2008 Olympics, or Thierry Henry after his hand ball last year. But clay offers the players a chance to get involved the same way rec players must, and to change calls in their opponents' favor that their opponents might not even have challenged. I saw Novak Djokovic do this, much to his detriment, against Rafael Nadal four years ago at this tournament; Djokovic reversed a line judges' out call even though Nadal was ready to accept it and move on to the next point. In Madrid we saw Nadal immediately give Roger Federer two calls based on ball marks. This shift has come at the same time that the umpires themselves have become more willing to get out of their chairs. I was shocked to see, in a replay of the 1984 French Open men’s final, that the umpire huffily refused, on more than one occasion, to check a mark that Lendl or McEnroe wanted checked. Instead, he looked at his watch and told them to get back to the baseline and play before he gave them a time violation. Whatever appeal that stern old-school approach might have to us today, this is one case where a relaxation of authority has been a positive development. The old authoritarian style was the equivalent of having Hawk-Eye available and not being allowed to use it.
For the most part, we watch tennis to see athletic plays, to root for people we like, to get caught up in a drama. But to see a small honorable act from someone who is otherwise fighting to destroy his opponent elicits another sensation, one generally lacking from sports: It makes us, for lack of a better term, feel good. I got to experience this from the player’s standpoint a few years ago in an adult tournament. On a crucial point, I called one of my opponent's serves wide. He got ready to hit his second serve, but I checked the mark to be sure. To my shock, the ball had caught the line. I gave him the ace, but losing the point that way somehow made me feel good—better, even, than if I had won it. Clay-court tennis is one place that still teaches you that acting honorably has personal rewards.
We hear that Hawk-Eye adds entertainment for fans. But is it as dramatic as seeing the umpire—whatever he or she looks like—come down off the chair, dance around the mark, point at it with his pen in hand, and then, finally, end the suspense and let us all in on his decision? Hawk-Eye, the word from on high, has none of the democratic appeal of seeing two players get involved in the process. We know that the replay system takes everything out of the umpires’ hands; but it takes it out of the players' hands as well. It removes a link between them, a sense that they’re in a match together, that still exists on clay.
Is there anything analogous to a ball mark in other sports? A football field won't tell you whether a wide receiver has landed out of bounds. You can’t see where a foul ball in baseball has landed. But even if it isn’t unique, there’s something cool—and honorable—about a system that polices itself. There’s no need for technology to find the evidence on clay. As the saying goes, you leave it all on the court.