“I’m black, so I sweat a lot,” funny and entertaining Gael Monfils said in order to protest against time violation in Doha.
Well… it is not the only one to sweat as also other players suffer from the same problems (ask to Ferrer, Isner etc etc). Actually sweating is a (big) part of the game especially during the Australian Summer.
The Rule
The ATP states that player have to resume the game withing 25 seconds otherwise they first receive a warning and then they lose the first serve or the point (if they receive).
Chair empires tried to enforce the rule, but there was a big discontent among players.
Slams have a generice 20 second rule… (?)
From the Australian Open
The Australian Open director Craig Tiley said “The Australian Open as a grand slam will not be doing anything different to what we’ve done in the past, we will still enforce the 20-second rule,”
Sweating players?
The rule in theory is fine as some players such as Rafa and Nole take really too much time in between points (the King of Clay has incredible “procedures” before serving), but what about “”sweating players”?
Common sense…
Well that’s a big problem as you can’t play tennis if your hand can’t hold the racket to complete undermine the game. So some common sense has to be applied.
For this reason Brad Drewett (ATP boss) will talk to players about the problem.
… but common sense = no enforcement
Unfortunately when people talk about applying rules with common sense, this means that the rules are not applied. Isn’t it? … so… they may have to change the rule. How?
Maybe they should not count when players need to use the towels or whatever, but it would be really healthy to avoid watching Nole’s thousands ball bouncing or Rafa’s (censored 😉 picking. That is quite annoying at times.
“I think they need to enforce them,” said Path Cash . “As much as we like Novak bouncing balls between points, I think the fans just want to see some tennis.”
