Live Sports Returns - Men's Tennis
For those interested in tennis (or any taste of live sports), Tennis Channel is televising what they call a (Re)Open featuring 4 top 60 men's tennis players. Coverage is from noon to 3 pm today. They're using lots of different tactics to provide the players and chair umpire with proper social distancing. The players taking part include Americans Reilly Opelka & Tommy Paul along with Hubert Hurkacz from Poland and Miomir Kecmanovic from Serbia. Players are playing best of 3 sets, first to 4 games wins the set, tie-breakers at 3-all and games featuring no-add scoring.
There is more background information at the link below including the social distancing measures being used:
This makes sense. As long as both players have been tested (and the test is accurate), I don't see any issue with this already socially distant sport resuming.
One question though...
Admittedly, I don't watch a lot of tennis but when I do I am always impressed by their instant replay system to the point where I wonder if they actually need a chair umpire anymore? It feels like for the most part on obvious calls the players can referee themselves and the close calls take like 3 seconds max with the replay system.
Is there other responsibilities that a Chair Umpire has where they actually need to be on the courts? Also, don't they sit like 10 feet above the court?
Keeping score in the match, enforcing rules, etc. Keeping time. And yes, they sit in a chair above the court. Serve as a liaison between players and other officials (if need be) like lines people, trainers, ball kids, tournament directors, etc. They're also there not to call lines, but can overrule line calls, which can save a player from using a challenge on a questionable line call.
None of those things are really necessary, especially the last thing you mentioned. You could easily use the electronic system on every play to judge line calls, but they refuse to do so, instead using it only to overrule calls on express challenges. This arguably harms the integrity of the game by increasing the chance of mistakes but honors tradition by preserving the old positions.
Couple common use cases where umpires are still needed:
- Did the player challenge an out call in a timely fashion. The umpire decides that.
- Player A hits it in, player B hits it out. Player A's shot was called out but they challenge and technology shows the ball was in. The umpire need to decide if this "out" call affected player B from missing the shot and determine if the point should be replayed or if player A is awarded the point.
- Time violations. There is a serve clock now but you still need a human to reset it and enforce it. Umpire decides when the serving motion starts. Umpire can choose to not enforce if the reason the serve clock was violated was because of crowd noise or the opponent not being ready to serve, etc.
- Controlling behaviour. Player smashing rackets. Player cursing. "Technical fouls" essentially.
- Player receiving illegal coaching from stands (coaching is not allowed in tennis).
- Umpire handles admin tasks like flipping coin, allowing requests to see medical trainer, allowing requests to leave the court. Weather delays.
Can you make technology do all of that? Probably not. Theoretically in the future, yes. Like when robots are handing out technical fouls in the NBA or computer vision software decides whether the knee was down before breaking the plane in football, etc. Human umps still have a role in tennis.
Totally disagree.
1) Get rid of all human calls. Let the tech make all the in or out calls. No need for any more challenges and therefore no need to figure out if a mistaken call affected another player. You do not need an umpire or any other human for this at all.
2) You may need a human to manage the clock, but there is no reason such a person would need to be on the court. Put them in a booth above the stands like a clock operator in other sports. This would be an easy social distancing win.
3) The illegal coaching rules were always stupid and should be scrapped (I think the recent contretemps between Serena and the umpire proved this). Let the players be coached. I'm also not a big fan of the controlling behavior rules. I don't really care if someone wants to smash a racket. McEnroe was pulling that shit for years with limited punishment. Plus, getting the human officials off the court will remove the target of the player's insults. Who would they yell at if all the officials were gone?
4) Let the players flip their own coin and decide when they need medical attention. Or if you're really concerned about people trying to rig the coin toss, have it done in advance by tournament administration.
You can absolutely make technology right now that can do 95% of an umpire's job, and the other 5% can be done by a clock operator nowhere near the court.
1) I agree with you if this can be done. It'll need some iteration on Hawkeye though. Right now there is a processing time which would make it awkward as players would likely continue the rally before being told that the call 5 shots ago was wrong. But not a big barrier though.
2) Human needs to process lots of information about whether there was a legitimate reason why the serve clock was violated, when to restart the serve clock, and when the serving motion started. I would argue that the human being on the court helps in determining all this but if there is a video setup that works with the human being off the court then sure I'd agree. The umpire being on court is not really a social distancing issue right now though.
3) I mostly agree with you. Some of those rules are bullshit. You still want a human to resolve conflicts between opponents though.
4) Coin toss, agree. Medical timeouts, no. This is a common gamesmanship tactic. Someone on court who's got a pulse on the match needs to approve it.
I want to see less of the umpire as much as you do but you're oversimplifying some of the issues here.
"You can absolutely make technology right now that can do 95% of an umpire's job"
Not really. The was the ball in or out stuff is feasible. But as someone who does machine learning work, the other stuff I described would require some serious artificial intelligence.
I've been doing my job throughout this, and havent been tested at all...oops sorry for failing to meet your criterion.
Double Post
For those of you into combat sports, the ufc is running 3 events over a one week period, starting Saturday with a ppv, Tuesday night an event on espn+ and then next Saturday another event on I think regular ESPN. I know it's not to everyone's taste but it is live sports at least.
German soccer returns next week Saturday!
December 29th, 2020 at 4:41 PM ^
Hey. Very good news. I want to see tennis match in live very much! Now I can only watch old matches online! Also I will make bets, I saw many cool odds on https://sportstennisbet.com/ site. There are really many possibilities to win good money!
January 3rd, 2021 at 12:54 AM ^
Sorry to decrease your odds of spamming success, but you're now banned for spamming.
7 spams posts in 3 weeks. Pretty impressive, but no more. Busted!