Can you call a foot fault in adult recreational tennis?  When do you call a let versus claim the point?

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!

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

Here’s a complete transcript of our conversation:

Tennis Officiating and Rule Clarifications, Part Three

Carolyn 0:05
Hi guys, this is part three of our conversation with Rebel Good. He does the Court of Appeals column in Tennis Magazine and has officiated U.S. Open events, Olympics, and numerous Davis Cup and Fed Cup events. I feel like after talking to him, I’m finally starting to understand when you call a let versus claim the point. But here is part three. Can I do the next one? Because I’ve actually had this one happen to me too, which is: can you ever call a foot fault in adult recreational tennis?

Rebel 0:34
Before I answer it, let me ask: have you ever tried?

Carolyn 0:38
No, I haven’t, but someone wanted to call it on me.

Erin 0:43
Oh, and we had another guest on, and someone called it on them in a match tiebreak and they lost that match.

Carolyn 0:52
He hit an ace to make it 11-9 or something like that in the match tiebreak, and the guy goes, “Nope, that was a foot fault. Second serve.”

Rebel 1:03
Gotta admire the chutzpah there.

Erin 1:05
Exactly.

Rebel 1:07
Okay. This is an item in the code that I happen to disagree with, and I’ve written about it in my column. Basically what I’ve said is that any unofficiated match in which a player calls a foot fault on their opponent is going to end badly. That’s all I can say. It’s going to end badly. There is a provision in the code that says if you have warned your opponent about their foot faulting, and you have sought unsuccessfully to get an official to come to your court to deal with it, and the foot faulting continues and is egregious, then indeed you can call a foot fault on your opponent. But that’s a pretty lengthy process in itself.

Carolyn 1:57
Yeah, that seems like a really high standard.

Rebel 2:00
Well, the suggestion that I made in Tennis Magazine, and boy, did I get some feedback on it, was this. If your opponent is foot faulting egregiously, and let’s remember, most people in recreational tennis are not serve-and-volleyers, so they’re not really getting much of an edge, if any, from the foot fault. But if they’re not just stepping on the line, they’re stepping into the court, all the way in, and you just feel like they’re gaining an advantage, and you have said, “I can see you foot faulting pretty seriously, you need to stop,” and you’ve gone through all that, my suggestion is: the next time it’s your serve, move in about eight feet and hit your serve. And when they ask you what you’re doing, just say, “We’re not calling foot faults, are we?”

Erin 2:56
Right. Was that your answer in the column?

Carolyn 3:00
Oh, that’s awesome.

Erin 3:01
Oh, that’s great. And the feedback…

Rebel 3:04
“How could you say something like that?” Well, I know it can be very frustrating to someone who goes, “My opponent is not playing by the rules, and there seems to be no recourse on my part, and they don’t seem to understand that what they’re doing is as much a violation of the rules as, you know, a bad line call.” So sometimes you have to bring their attention into focus.

Erin 3:30
I love it.

Carolyn 3:31
I do too. That’s great. Rebel, you’ve actually gone over this, but if you could just go over it one more time, because I do think this is the issue where people are always like, “What do we do in this situation?” Generally, when would you call a let versus claim a point?

Rebel 3:48
Okay. The first thing is, don’t open your mouth and call a let unless you’ve been hindered. We have people who are trying to be nice and call lets all over the place: “I thought you were hindered by something that was happening at your end of the court, so I called a let.” Or even worse, you’re standing on a court and you call a let because of something you see happening on the court next to you. You’re yelling over to their court, telling them they’ve got a let. It’s not your business. You’re a spectator of that match, and you don’t have a role in it. But back to staying self-contained within your match: don’t call a let unless you or your partner has been hindered. And once you’ve got that word out, going “I’ve been hindered,” now you dig down into: was I hindered because of an intentional act of my opponent, in which case I will win the point? Or was it an unintentional act of the opponent, or some outside force that created the hindrance, in which case we’re replaying the point?

Erin 4:51
That’s a really good way to think about that.

Rebel 4:53
You work through it. Don’t say it unless you’ve been hindered, and then work out whether the hindrance was intentional or unintentional.

Carolyn 5:01
Yeah. And if it’s intentional, it’s my point. If it’s unintentional, we replay.

Rebel 5:08
Exactly.

Carolyn 5:09
Exactly.

Erin 5:10
I like it. Simplified. I needed it simplified. Too many complicated questions, but that’s your simple answer.

Rebel 5:17
Could I add one more situation? Other than the ball spinning back over the net, it’s the one I get the most questions on. And because of the way I’ve answered it, the most complaints, you might say.

Carolyn 5:31
Oh, absolutely.

Rebel 5:32
And I’m sure this happens to you. It’s a variation of something you asked me. You’re at the net in doubles. Your opponent whistles a shot by you, and you think it’s going out, and you want your partner to let it bounce. So you yell “out,” and then it lands on the baseline, and your partner is going, “No, it’s good,” and swings and hits the ball back. Your opponents catch the ball and say, “That’s our point.” And you go, “Why?” And they go, “Well, you called the ball out and then reversed your call.” You say, “I didn’t call the ball out. I was just telling my partner. How can I call a ball out? It was in the air. You can’t call a ball out until it lands. I was just telling my partner to let the ball drop.” Well, there are, I can’t remember, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand words in the English language, and one of them, “out,” is a call in tennis. Whether the ball had landed or not doesn’t make any difference as far as I’m concerned. If your yelling “out” hindered your opponent, i.e., they stopped play because they went, “Oh, they’re calling the ball out,” then you have to live with that. If you don’t want this to happen, use a different word.

Erin 6:49
Any other word.

Rebel 6:50
Say “bounce it,” something like that. But if your opponents use the word “out” and then play the ball as good, I would say stop play and claim the point. The other part of that is that you have to stop play. Don’t keep playing and then, at the end of the point, go, “Well, you did this.”

Erin 7:09
I think that’s what happens. People end up playing the point, and if they win the point, they’re okay with the ball being called out. But if they lose it, then they go, “Well, I was hindered three shots ago.”

Rebel 7:19
And there’s another part of that too, which is that too many recreational players call balls good. They open their mouth and say, “It’s good,” or “It’s in,” or something like that on a close ball. “In” or “good” is not a call. The call is “out.” So don’t open your mouth to tell your opponents their shot is in. We’re going to assume it’s in unless you call it out.

Carolyn 7:44
Oh, okay. That’s interesting. So people shouldn’t be yelling “in” as they’re hitting the ball either.

Rebel 7:51
No.

Carolyn 7:51
Because it may hinder the other side, right?

Rebel 7:55
Yeah.

Carolyn 7:55
It’s like saying “good shot.”

Erin 7:57
And then hitting it back. “Great shot,” and then hit it.

Rebel 8:02
And I know you’re all talking through the whole point. Recreational tennis is a sociable game, and you talk a lot, but you don’t have to talk during the points. I just see this so often, particularly with balls on the baseline, where your partner’s at the net and the player in the backcourt is yelling “it’s in” because they’re telling their partner that they’re still playing. Well, the partner also ought to just keep playing until they hear an out call.

Carolyn 8:34
We really appreciate Rebel coming on the podcast. We hope you check out our website, which is secondservepodcast.com. Thanks so much for listening, and we hope to see you on the court soon.