3 – Definition of the beginning of the point
Another aspect of which we speak strangely little concerns the ball toss in the movement of the service. By regulation in tennis the point begins when the player on the service begins the movement to impact the ball with the racket. It follows that the ball toss can be repeated several times. Absurdly even a thousand, without incurring a penalty, as long as you do not make the gesture of wanting to hit it. The idea of being able to repeat the gesture until you feel comfortable comes from a time when tennis was a sport exclusively for gentlemen and ladies, and you certainly didn’t want to quarrel and argue over such a detail.
Even today, a correct etiquette of tennis means that in general athletes do not take advantage of this option to distract the opponent or entangle him. However, sometimes it has happened, so much that the USTA has released suggestions in its Fair Play manual also regarding this aspect. In general, the basic concept is wrong: the ball toss is a technical gesture as much as a backhand or a smash, and there is no logical reason why it should be repeated until it goes well. Of course, weather conditions can sometimes make it very difficult, but it’s a principle that applies to every other aspect of the game. If, in fact, we count that this potentially leaves space to mischief and irregularities, especially with the advent of the shot clock, the rule should be changed.
A reason for suffrage also lies in the fact that a similar situation has already occurred in the world of sport. We are talking about volleyball, where in the past, as in tennis, the movement of the service could be repeated (only once) if the ball toss had failed. Subsequently, it was decided to eliminate the second attempt, since many players began to perform the jump service, the concession of the double attempt had turned into a fair waste of time. The ‘abuse’ of this freedom therefore led the International Federation to change the rule. On the tennis field, on the other hand, the only tournament to introduce this rule on an experimental basis was the IPTL, an experiment of the last decade which proposed several interesting innovations, but for budget and logistics reasons had a very short life.
