what do you think???

[Muffin Man]

so, club mixed doubles tournament today....my wife and i are playing a very competitive quarterfinals. i wasn't keeping track of the game score (long day) and my wife called our opponents ball out. since i didn't know the game score i assumed we won the game as our opponents passed us the balls for my wife to serve. our opponents thought that they had won the game since they didn't hear or see my wife's call of the ball being out. it was actually 40-30 so it would have been deuce, not game over. in our opponents mind that made the game score 3-3, in my mind after that game i thought it was 4-2. we lose the the two games at which point my wife puts the cards on the court to 4-4. at which point i announce the set score. this leads to a discussion at the net at which point we realize that the miscommunication came from the 6th game that we each thought we had won.

now, what do we do? i explain, being too generous maybe, that all games after the fact were played in good faith. i give them the 6th game which goes from us serving at 4-4 to us serving at 3-5. now, i don't see how we could have gone back 2 games to replay the 6th game at deuce. i know within a game you should go back to the point that both sides agree on. anyways, what was the right call? any thoughts.

by the way....i hold at what is now 3-5, and we lose 4-6 in the 3rd set. bad luck. obviously, holding at what i thought was 4-4 to put the pressure on our opponents to hold was something i had looked forward to after we had dropped a couple of games in a row.

also, obviously i know i should keep track of the game score.....so let's look for advice and rulings on what we should have done at 4-4/3-5 confusion.


here is a list of the games which might make my long winded explanation a little clearer:

our minds my wife and i....
lose, lose, hold, break, hold, break, lose, lose, hold,

opponents minds my wife and i.....
lose, lose, hold, break, hold, lose, lose, lose, hold, lose

 

[NoSkillzAndy]

I think what you did was fair and that is what I would have done in the same situation. Sucks, but that's your fault for not keeping track of the score and calling out the score clearly. The actual ruling in the USTA "Code" is for play to go back to the last agreed upon score and resume from there. In your case that might be 3-2.

 

[Muffin Man]

yeah....my fault for not keeping track of the score. i knew we could have gone back to the last agreed upon score but i felt it was wrong to backtrack that many games to figure it out.

if it was a usta or a money tourney i would have gotten the tournament director to figure out what the best solution would be. but....it was a more casual tournament at a club that i teach at. i didn't exactly want to raise a big stink out there on the court. thanks for confirming what i had thought about the usta code. next time...we'll know the score...get to deuce and win the next couple of points. like i said....bad luck.

 

[Cindysphinx]

You can go back and play the disputed points, so your wife would serve at deuce, and you'd all live by the outcome (counting the subsequent games, of course).

Gotta call out that set score loudly before you serve . . .

 

[Muffin Man]

opponent was serving.....still my fault for not keeping track of the score.

 

[Geezer Guy]

Game 7 and 8 stand as played.

You'd restart game 6 from Deuce, I guess.

 

[tennis-n-sc]

Since you both agreed where the problem was, you could have gone back and played the one point for that game, counting the games and points played afterward. Or, you could have done the gentlemanly thing you did and chalk it up to experience. But I've never seen a scoring dispute get out of a game.

 

[Muffin Man]

if it hadn't have been the 6th set of the day i probably would have been thinking a little more clearly and i guess we should have replayed that 6th game from deuce with all the other games having counted.

regardless of the outcome of the quarterfinals i had a match right after in the open division of the tournament. it was probably for the best because after the open match...which went to a tiebreak in the 2nd i was pretty much toast. by the time i got home just about any muscle cramped when i moved it. i don't know how i would have made it back on sunday to play a match or two in either division.

next time....i'll make sure to know the game score and make sure to finish the game in question. like i said originally....i was trying to error on the friendly side of things and it seemed weird to backtrack that many games. if it had been the pro-am the previous weekend with some money and a little more prestige on the line it would have gone a little differently.

long story short....all of my lessons this week are getting a little talk about how everyone is entitled to an audible call of score and all disputes should be settled immediately.