From USA Today:
Not that a deflated tennis ball would benefit anybody, but let’s say for the sake of argument that it did and a top player was caught deflating balls before a match at the French Open. Whereas the NFL would go for the strictest possible punishment — a four-game suspension — tennis would give the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. Come to think of it, a slap on the wrist is too much, as the slap still stings for an instant. No, tennis would give the equivalent of a gentle caress of the wrist and then issue the sort of fine you get for speeding in a school zone. It’s a complete joke.
This speaks to the complete lack of structure in tennis, which has been displayed so well by Rafael Nadal’s continued blackballing of chair umpire Carlos Bernardes, due to a series of minor run-ins that are inconsequential but came to a head during a match this winter when Bernardes gave Nadal a time violation during a match while the Spaniard was changing his shorts backwards on a changeover. The overarching theme is that Bernardes is the rare chair umpire unafraid of actually enforcing the time-between-points rule all other umps ignore.
As The Telegraph first reported and Nadal himself later confirmed, he later asked for Bernardes not to work his matches and his request was accepted. “Yes, it was my request,†Nadal to the newspaper, as if his demand was something routine. “I consider him [Bernardes] a great umpire and a good person, but I think when you have some troubles with the same umpire, sometimes it’s easy to stay for a while away, no?â€
This is a pathetic display from a sport with non-existent rules enforcement. Since the governing bodies (the ATP and WTA, respectively) are basically impotent and operate at the whims of tournaments, you can see things like Nadal making the absurd request to ban a highly respected umpire from his matches and actually getting his wish.
