Have you ever been on the court and thought “what is the rule in this situation”?

We are thrilled to have Rebel Good join us!  Rebel has been officiating tennis for over 30 years and has officiated US Opens, Olympics, Davis Cup and Fed Cup events.  He writes the Court of Appeals Column for Tennis Magazine and the Stump The Ump section for Western Wake Tennis Association.  Click on Stump The Ump to read a few interesting situations! 

We are replaying a few of our most popular episodes and this was one of them!

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You can watch part of our conversation with Rebel on our YouTube channel here.

Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Tennis Officiating and Rules Discussion

Carolyn 0:07
Hi, this is Carolyn, and I’m here with Erin, and we are thrilled to have Rebel Good with us tonight. He does the Court of Appeals column in Tennis Magazine, has officiated tennis for close to 30 years, and has worked in more than 20 U.S. Open events, two Olympics, and numerous Davis Cup and Fed Cup events. He also does the Stump the Ump section for Western Wake Tennis Association. So we’ll ask him some questions about himself and then do a lightning round of quick rulings to see if we can stump the ump. So, Rebel, can you tell us how you started officiating tennis?

Rebel 0:40
Sure. Back in the mid-80s, there was a tournament that happened to wander into our small town of Elkin, population about 4,000, and they needed some officials. And so several of us volunteered and we got the training to be officials, and then we just went on from there. And it was at a time in the USTA when you could actually move up fairly rapidly if you applied yourself to it. And so within about a year and a half, two years, I was doing professional events and then the U.S. Open.

Erin 1:12
Oh wow. Yeah, that’s amazing.

Rebel 1:15
Perhaps it was just that they were desperate, but you could move along pretty quickly.

Erin 1:21
I actually watch pro tennis, and I see a lot of officials that I’ve seen at Fed Cup and ones that just travel all over. So did you do some traveling too?

Rebel 1:31
Yes, I’ve been very fortunate. As she said in the intro, I worked the Olympics twice, Barcelona and Atlanta. I’ve worked in New Zealand and Bermuda and Canada, and then, you know, all over the United States. My first U.S. Open was in 1989. And this past year, I did my last U.S. Open. I’ve officially retired from the pro world, but that made five separate decades that I officiated at the U.S. Open. So I thought it was a good time to call it a day, like about three minutes before they fired me, because they aren’t using line umpires anymore at the U.S. Open.

Erin 2:08
Gotcha. So I have another question about that experience. Did you ever get nervous officiating? Again, I watch a lot of pro matches, and I know there are certain players that like to yell at umpires, and there were obviously players back in the day, like McEnroe, who were famous for doing things like that. Did any of those things happen to you? Or did you feel like a certain match might go that way based on who was playing?

Rebel 2:34
No, I was never nervous because I never made a mistake. Ever.

Erin 2:39
Kind of like adult rec tennis. Me too. Yes.

Rebel 2:44
You know, it’s like anything else. You just learn from your mistakes. You have to be able to put things behind you. And I will also say this about the players. By and large, the players are wonderful. They are understanding, they make mistakes themselves, and they are understanding of officials who make mistakes, most of them.

Erin 3:01
That’s good. Well, turning that into adult rec tennis now, which is what Carolyn and I play, we are never going to be good enough to have officials, unfortunately.

Carolyn 3:10
I wish we could get court officials.

Erin 3:12
Yeah. We’ve gone to states a lot of times and we’ve asked for officials, and they say, no, we don’t have enough people to send an official to your court. So we have to line judge for our opponents, which Carolyn and I always talk about. Of course, we want to win the match, but here we are being the judge of our opponents, of whether their ball’s in or out, making calls. So can you give us any advice on that?

Rebel 3:40
Well, what I would recommend is that you download a copy of the rules of tennis and the code. You can get the Friend at Court rule book from the USTA website, or you just Google Friend at Court and it’ll come up. Download the PDF. And I would highly recommend reading the 31 rules of tennis and really getting into the code. And I say this because too many people learn the rules, or the ropes, so to speak, from other players, and I guarantee you that they’ll get it wrong. My experience with answering all these questions for Tennis Magazine or Western Wake or whoever is that people will start off by going, “I was always told,” and then they’ll tell you some quote-unquote rule that just doesn’t exist.

Erin 4:33
Yes.

Rebel 4:34
So I would say, go to the rule book. It won’t take you long. It would take you about half an hour to read the rules of tennis and the code. And then just remember when you’re out there on the court that the bottom line in an unofficiated match is courtesy and honesty. And so you always give your opponent the benefit of the doubt.

Erin 4:53
Agreed. Carolyn is actually very good about knowing the rules. We’ve done a couple of podcasts on reading the rule book.

Carolyn 5:02
I love reading the rules. I love it. I think everybody should have the rules with them so we can quickly flip to the page if there’s a question. But I think I’m one of the few, because I don’t know anyone else who actually carries the rules with them. But that’s really great.

Rebel 5:17
Most people I know just have my phone number.

Carolyn 5:20
Oh. Can we get that out of the room?

Erin 5:23
See, now we have your phone number.

Carolyn 5:25
Yes, yes. We can be like, hold on one second, let me text Rebel. We know Rebel Good.

Rebel 5:31
Go right ahead. I mean, if there’s a beer riding on it, you’re going to want to get an answer.

Erin 5:36
Exactly. That’s great.

Rebel 5:38
Tennis is, you know, a simple game with very few rules, but there are so many combinations and permutations that can end up making it so interesting.

Erin 5:48
Yeah. So we have a lightning round of questions that we’ll just throw out at you, if you don’t mind throwing back some answers. I’ll take the first one, Carolyn. Okay. So an opponent called the ball out and then said it was actually in. Do you replay the point, or whose point is that? This has happened to me a lot, so I can’t wait for this answer.

Rebel 6:13
Well, this is black letter law, you might say, in the code, in an unofficiated match, which is of course what you’re talking about. And that is, if a player reverses a call from out to good, they lose the point.

Erin 6:26
That’s what I thought.

Rebel 6:27
It’s not replayed. One of the things as officials is you want to avoid replaying points as much as possible. I know I’ve told you that courtesy is a bedrock of recreational tennis, but it can be carried to an extreme where you’re constantly replaying points when there’s no necessity to replay them.

Carolyn 6:47
Yeah.

Rebel 6:48
Calling a ball out and then correcting it to good and then getting to replay the point is just not a good procedure. It allows someone to basically call every close ball out, then reverse the call and get to play the point over again.

Carolyn 7:10
Right.

Rebel 7:11
When you’ve already hit a good shot.

Erin 7:12
So I was the receiver and my opponent hit a serve and I called it out because I thought it was going to be out, and then I saw it in and I said no, and I reversed it, and I said, “That’s your point.” And my partner said, “No, we replay it.” And I said, “But I’ve already conceded the point to them. I called it wrong.” And she said no, we play, and she stuck her foot down, and everyone just went, “Okay, we’ll play it over.” But I felt like that was clearly their point.

Rebel 7:41
Stick to your guns.

Erin 7:43
See, I was willing to stick to my guns, but my partner stuck to hers even more. And so at that point, we just let it go. And the opponents did as well.

Carolyn 7:52
So Erin, do you want to do the next one too? Because I think that happened to you. This has happened to me.

Erin 7:57
Yeah, specifically. So when we’re playing a match, a bat actually swooped down as I was getting ready to hit the ball and missed it. Can you claim a bat let, or any other? We’ve also had someone say a bee got in my way. Can you call a let on a bat or a bee?

Rebel 8:13
You can try. I had a feeling this was going to come up. What I’m saying here is people use the term “let” as though a let is a thing, and it isn’t. A let is a call. Let is a call that says, “I’ve been hindered.” So the bottom of that is the hindrance. If a bat swoops down and you stop play and call let, you’re telling your opponent, “I was hindered by that bat.” Your opponent goes, “What bat? I didn’t see a bat.” What bee? What gnat?

Carolyn 8:50
Yeah.

Rebel 8:51
Then you’re making a request to replay the point. You’re not asking that a point be given to you, you’re making a request to replay a point. Most people in recreational tennis will give you the benefit of the doubt the first time.

Carolyn 9:08
Right.

Rebel 9:08
But if the bat hit you, there’s no question there. Then there’s a broad gray area of how close the bat has to come to you to actually hinder you. Or do you just see a bat flitting over the top of the court and you go, “Ooh”? So it’s common sense. The bottom line here is that things that happen off the court, so to speak, can’t hinder you. If a car drives right beside your court and backfires loudly, if cars even backfire anymore, or some yahoo in the car screams at you…

Carolyn 9:53
Yeah, and we have fire trucks coming by us that go down the road.

Rebel 9:55
Yeah, okay. So the fire truck comes screaming by with its siren blaring, and you stop play and say let. Your opponent might say, “Why? It didn’t bother me.” It’s something off the court. It’s the same as when we have officiated matches and we have spectators: a spectator yelling out during a point is not a reason for you to replay the point. Even if they’re yelling “Miss it!” while you’re in the middle of your backswing for an overhead.

Erin 10:25
That’s a really good point.

Carolyn 10:26
We have to remember that if there’s a spectator doing it, there’s nothing you can do. If the person on the court is doing it, that’s different.

Rebel 10:32
Well, that’s a different thing, and I will get to that in a minute. But once again, every time you’re talking about saying the word “let,” with the exception of a service let, which is something entirely different, it always has to do with a hindrance. And so the first question is: who was hindered, and how?

Erin 10:52
Yeah, that makes sense.

Carolyn 10:54
And there are degrees. That’s interesting too. A bat that hits you is different than a bat in the air.

Rebel 10:59
Right. And there are also degrees of whether a hindrance is created by an opponent, where you’re making a decision about whether it’s intentional or unintentional, or whether it’s something apart from you and your opponent. And of course, a bottom line there also is you can’t hinder yourself.

Carolyn 11:18
Thanks very much to Rebel for doing this. There is a part two to this episode because we had so many questions for Rebel. I’ve also included in the show notes a link to his Stump the Ump section for Western Wake Tennis Association, which I think every adult recreational player should read. If you’d like to see a picture of Rebel, please check out our website, which is secondservepodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening. I hope to see you on the courts and until next time.