AtomicForehand
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Receiver's partner standing in service box??
I recently played a doubles match in which an interesting situation occurred. One of the opponents was the poor-sportsman/headgame type. One of the (many) ways in which she let us know this about her was that, when I served to her partner in the deuce court, she would straddle the center line so that one of her feet was in the service box in which her partner had to receive serve. At the outset I assumed she was doing it accidentally and informed her that she was standing in the service box.
"I know," she replied coolly; "I can stand anywhere I want."
I had never seen this before, and replied, "Really? In the rules it says you can stand in your partner's service box?"
"I can stand anywhere I damn well please," she snapped again, as if I were slow.
"You're blocking your partner's view of the ball," I said. "And you're probably gonna get hit."
"Hit me if you can. If you do you get the point," was the reply.
"OK, great. If I hit you, we get the point, and you can't cry about getting hit," I answered. That seemed to **** her off. I guess she was trying to intimidate *me*.
So, not being familiar with this rule, each time I served to her partner I debated whether or not to try to nail her with my serve. (She stood this way every single time, sometimes farther inside the box, sometimes moving in or out of the service box during my motion, obviously trying to distract me. Luckily I am a decent server and was not put off by this at all--I aced her partner twice during the match even with her standing in the box, and probably another 60% of my serves to the partner were unreturnables, so I guess her strategy didn't really work.)
So my question for all of you is, what if I had hit her? Would I really have gotten the point? Also: 1) Would it have been poor sportsmanship to have deliberately nailed her after the little challenge she issued? 2) Would I have had to have hit only her foot in the service box to win the point, or would tagging her on any part of her body have sufficed, even if that body part were outside the box? 3) Did I do the right thing by failing to rise to her bait and continuing to serve as though she weren't there? 4) Have any of you ever encountered this situation before, and what did you do?
(As a side note, while I didn't try to hit her with my serve, in the middle of the match I hit a hard volley that struck her in the throat. Quite accidental on my part. But you should have heard her scream! She immediately launched the offending ball over the fence, screaming the F word, then stopped play, storming off the court snarling "I need ice!! ICE!!!!" I apologized, asked if she were OK, and told her I hadn't meant to hit her [which was true--it was a lightning-fast volley], and she screeched, "YES YOU DID!!!" Heh heh. My partner and I just grinned and rolled our eyes, while Poor Sportsman's partner [who was very nice, incidentally] sheepishly apologized and said, "She's fine" as PS stalked away. Guess this wasn't the first time PS has behaved badly while playing with this particular partner...)
I recently played a doubles match in which an interesting situation occurred. One of the opponents was the poor-sportsman/headgame type. One of the (many) ways in which she let us know this about her was that, when I served to her partner in the deuce court, she would straddle the center line so that one of her feet was in the service box in which her partner had to receive serve. At the outset I assumed she was doing it accidentally and informed her that she was standing in the service box.
"I know," she replied coolly; "I can stand anywhere I want."
I had never seen this before, and replied, "Really? In the rules it says you can stand in your partner's service box?"
"I can stand anywhere I damn well please," she snapped again, as if I were slow.
"You're blocking your partner's view of the ball," I said. "And you're probably gonna get hit."
"Hit me if you can. If you do you get the point," was the reply.
"OK, great. If I hit you, we get the point, and you can't cry about getting hit," I answered. That seemed to **** her off. I guess she was trying to intimidate *me*.
So, not being familiar with this rule, each time I served to her partner I debated whether or not to try to nail her with my serve. (She stood this way every single time, sometimes farther inside the box, sometimes moving in or out of the service box during my motion, obviously trying to distract me. Luckily I am a decent server and was not put off by this at all--I aced her partner twice during the match even with her standing in the box, and probably another 60% of my serves to the partner were unreturnables, so I guess her strategy didn't really work.)
So my question for all of you is, what if I had hit her? Would I really have gotten the point? Also: 1) Would it have been poor sportsmanship to have deliberately nailed her after the little challenge she issued? 2) Would I have had to have hit only her foot in the service box to win the point, or would tagging her on any part of her body have sufficed, even if that body part were outside the box? 3) Did I do the right thing by failing to rise to her bait and continuing to serve as though she weren't there? 4) Have any of you ever encountered this situation before, and what did you do?
(As a side note, while I didn't try to hit her with my serve, in the middle of the match I hit a hard volley that struck her in the throat. Quite accidental on my part. But you should have heard her scream! She immediately launched the offending ball over the fence, screaming the F word, then stopped play, storming off the court snarling "I need ice!! ICE!!!!" I apologized, asked if she were OK, and told her I hadn't meant to hit her [which was true--it was a lightning-fast volley], and she screeched, "YES YOU DID!!!" Heh heh. My partner and I just grinned and rolled our eyes, while Poor Sportsman's partner [who was very nice, incidentally] sheepishly apologized and said, "She's fine" as PS stalked away. Guess this wasn't the first time PS has behaved badly while playing with this particular partner...)
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