How did the sport reach boiling point? In recent decades, officiating has been professionalised and electronic systems have been introduced to minimise human error. Remove the disagreements over line calls, the thinking went, and conflict would disappear. But it hasn’t worked out like that. When I spoke to Bernardes, who began officiating in 1989 and has umpired five grand slam finals, he told me that he, too, had expected that technology would eradicate confrontations with the players.
Although there is no statistical evidence that player misconduct in men’s or women’s tennis is on the rise, Lahyani believes that criticism of umpires is becoming more intense and personal. Technology has turned the spotlight on chair umpires like never before. “Make a mistake,” says Damien Dumusois, a French umpire who has officiated all four grand slam finals, “and it’s on the internet before we’ve finished the match.
three years later between Năstase and the equally difficult American player John McEnroe, in which the Romanian behaved so badly that the umpire awarded McEnroe the match. The umpire himself was eventually replaced and, after a 17-minute delay, Năstase was reinstated. The crowd were so riled that fights broke out in the stands. The match was completed with police on court.
Above all, officials needed to be able to “sell” the call – that is, convince the players that it was correct. The closer the ball was to the line, the more emphatic the call needed to be. Several umpires told me that they suffered from headaches early in their career. It can take young umpires years to learn how to “manage their focus,” says Richard Haigh, a British umpire who was awarded a gold badge last year. Lose concentration and the result can be humiliating. In 2015, during a first round match at the Cincinnati Open, Haigh overruled a line judge to call a serve “out” when it was inches inside the line. It was a blatant error – in tennis, inches are as good as miles.
Čičak had invited me along as she observed a young bronze-badge umpire. Umpires are normally evaluated by others one rank above them, and earning a gold badge takes years of near-perfect officiating. “She has great potential,” Čičak told me of the candidate. “But to go to the next level, it’s about the head.” At the highest levels, chair umpiring is an “exercise in psychology”, Čičak explained. The better the umpire is, the harder it is to spot what they’re actually doing.
Čičak awarded the umpire a score of five out of seven. To have scored higher, she’d have needed to have responded to a difficult situation, but nothing came up. Rising umpires who are being evaluated activelyome umpires, even great ones, can seem robotic or humourless in the chair. Lahyani is more of a showman. On big points, he’ll add ominous emphasis to the score: “fifteen-FORTY”. He has umpired every men’s world No 1 since the 90s, and describes his officiating skills as a gift from God .
Not sure why this is on your list to report. However, have you applied that to your jobs from government. Answer, NO. Your incongruency is being projected at people like vomit. This is why we know you how no self esteem left. Please I am not sure why you are in DENIAL on this.