I will play the Devils advocate.
Some Players in the heat of the moment of competitive play will scream, curse and bitchslap their equipment. This release is part and parcel of competitive sports and is not unique to tennis. Many sports give some wiggle room ( well, Golf but let’s face it golf is just weird and not really a sport). I had a tennis buddy who in city league always broke at least one racket a tournament.
It’s not an admirable trait but sometimes you can’t legislate all human emotion out there. I’m on the fence, for example, on the unsportsmanlike conduct as enforced this year in the NFL.
If this display results in deliberately aimed harm toward someone like Zverev’s hitting the chair I think that is clearly beyond the pall. If the action results in someone hitting someone else because of this release, aLa Djokovic, regardless of intent ,that also crosses the line. Again Regardless of intent. No one should be put in harms way. If the ball you hit bounces off three walls and THEN hits someone 150 feet away. you. are. out.
I dunno, I’ve seen plenty of players scream , curse at each other and smash rackets in tennis. Again the heat of the battle. The distinction is clearly if your display potentially harms others. Mickael Youzny hitting himself, while bat crazy, was just aimed at anger at himself, but others like flinging rackets across the court I agree is more muddied. Sitting down in a chair and smashing your racket to smithereens while still holding it, penalize the player but don’t throw them out for that.
The chairs see plenty of players venting on the court so I can see how in some cases they give them wiggle room. However I do think technical clarifications might help.
I'm not even sure you're playing Devil's Advocate. I think we all agree that most players are going to smash the odd racquet, curse, and generally blow off steam. It doesn't put them automatically on the Villains list. One part of my question is when it goes too far without proper sanction. I think Zverev is an example here. The guy is 6'6" and a young, fit athlete. Not only did he abuse his racquet, and the umpire, he intimidated the umpire. Wouldn't you have been intimidated? At this point, I think it's worth reading the Code that
@tented posted. Even a skim reminds us of the rules. While Zverev's match was over, so they couldn't assess warning/point penalty/game penalty/default, they chose the lesser road of just fining him, (a millionaire athlete) and putting him on probation. I think most of us here think that was getting off light. I'm OK with the chair using judgement as to wiggle room, to judge the heat of the moment, but it seems that the ATP, in particular, is reluctant to staunch a certain amount of behavior that is becoming worse, IMO.
If equipment thrown comes within say two feet of someone on the court or an individual has to move to avoid being hit results in an automatic disqualification that would take away perhaps some of the guesswork, again regardless of intent. Brooksby and Kyrgios would be disqualified regardless of intent simply because they came within a determined unreasonable distance from striking someone else. Or like I said earlier, releasing the equipment from your hand onto the court would automatically result in a game default as long as no one was near the thrown equipment.
This to me is the opposite of your being Devil's Advocate. By this, you'd say a near-miss becomes a default. That would harden the rules, and seems a bit much, though there could be a place for umpire/supervisor discretion (as in the case of Brooksby.) I'd say again: read the rules, and I think they take all or most of this into account. I have to say this: it's useless to make the point of "intent." Your whole point at the beginning of your post is that this behavior is basically self-directed and self-harming, or, at best, to blow of the steam valve. No one in 99% of cases
intends to harm anyone. (Though Zverev came close to seeming to.) What Kyrgios did, he did when the match was over. And he's been fined according to the rules. If there were a rule for nearly hitting someone, I will remind you that Djokovic would have to have been defaulted in the 2016 French Open.
Novak Djokovic got lucky at the French Open on Thursday when he threw his racket (it appeared accidentally) and nearly struck a line judge with it during his quarterfinal match against Tomas Berdyc…
ftw.usatoday.com
