canadave
Professional
I had asked for a Recreational Club Tennis subforum to be created for questions like this one, but I guess it's unheeded. Anyway, here's my question:
I play at a local town tennis club. We have "Adult Fun Nights" every Monday and Thursday evening, when everyone can just come down and play some tennis for fun.
Obviously we're not ultra competitive on nights like this, but we do keep score, and of course the more competitive folks among us do try to win (although the idea is primarily to have fun socially, not win matches). You're not supposed to take anyone's head off at net, that sort of thing. Usually we rotate people into our doubles matches if there's too many people, as there were tonight; five of us played (we played three games apiece, then rotated the fifth person into the games). We weren't playing "sets" or a "match", but we were just kind of keeping game score as we went along, for fun.
So my doubles partner at one point in the "match" told me that he thought the other guy was foot faulting pretty badly. I didn't think anything of it, but later, as I faced the guy's serve, he did seem to be serving pretty well. I thought, Maybe this guy really is egregiously foot faulting.
So between points, I went over to my new doubles partner (we had rotated by that time) and privately asked if he'd keep an eye on the server to see if he was foot faulting.
Immediately my partner rolls his eyes and announces in a loud voice for everyone to hear: "Foot fault? Are you kidding? I'm not going to call foot faults, this is recreational tennis!"
Then, on the next serve, which wound up in the net, he yelled, "FOOT FAULT!" On the second serve, he again yelled "FOOT FAULT!" Clearly he was trying to make the point that he thought it was silly to call such a thing in rec tennis.
I was burning up inside, and was thisclose to telling him off (he's lucky I'm a nice guy). My point was, even if you disagree with me about calling foot faults, fine....but don't take a private conversation and make it into a public spectacle.
And, I still think that as long as you're keeping score, even in a social setting, it's not inappropriate to call foot faults. Obviously if someone's toe barely brushes the line, I'm not going to be there with a magnifying glass; but if someone's foot is completely over the line on the serve, I feel that needs to be called, even in social "fun" tennis.
Am I wrong?
I play at a local town tennis club. We have "Adult Fun Nights" every Monday and Thursday evening, when everyone can just come down and play some tennis for fun.
Obviously we're not ultra competitive on nights like this, but we do keep score, and of course the more competitive folks among us do try to win (although the idea is primarily to have fun socially, not win matches). You're not supposed to take anyone's head off at net, that sort of thing. Usually we rotate people into our doubles matches if there's too many people, as there were tonight; five of us played (we played three games apiece, then rotated the fifth person into the games). We weren't playing "sets" or a "match", but we were just kind of keeping game score as we went along, for fun.
So my doubles partner at one point in the "match" told me that he thought the other guy was foot faulting pretty badly. I didn't think anything of it, but later, as I faced the guy's serve, he did seem to be serving pretty well. I thought, Maybe this guy really is egregiously foot faulting.
So between points, I went over to my new doubles partner (we had rotated by that time) and privately asked if he'd keep an eye on the server to see if he was foot faulting.
Immediately my partner rolls his eyes and announces in a loud voice for everyone to hear: "Foot fault? Are you kidding? I'm not going to call foot faults, this is recreational tennis!"
Then, on the next serve, which wound up in the net, he yelled, "FOOT FAULT!" On the second serve, he again yelled "FOOT FAULT!" Clearly he was trying to make the point that he thought it was silly to call such a thing in rec tennis.
I was burning up inside, and was thisclose to telling him off (he's lucky I'm a nice guy). My point was, even if you disagree with me about calling foot faults, fine....but don't take a private conversation and make it into a public spectacle.
And, I still think that as long as you're keeping score, even in a social setting, it's not inappropriate to call foot faults. Obviously if someone's toe barely brushes the line, I'm not going to be there with a magnifying glass; but if someone's foot is completely over the line on the serve, I feel that needs to be called, even in social "fun" tennis.
Am I wrong?
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