Caroline Wozniacki robbed of crucial point by clueless ump
Tennis is widely accepted to have the best replay system in sports -- no referees going under hoods, no umpires getting on 1970s DJ headphones to talk for three minutes about an obvious play at first base, no involvement of Jeff Triplette. It's just a challenge, a virtual rendering of whether the ball was in or out and then a point being awarded or replayed. Easy as pie.
But even the best replay system in sports has some kinks.
In Thursday's second-round match in St. Petersburg, Caroline Wozniacki was robbed of a crucial point after the chair umpire inexplicably awarded Dominika Cibulkova, a former Australian Open finalist, said point following a Cibulkova challenge.
It takes a while for the television announcers to catch on, but here's what happened: Cibulkova hit her return and it was called out. She challenged the call and it was determined the ball was in. At that point, since Wozniacki had cleanly returned the ball, the chair should have called for a replay. Wozniacki can't be punished for an erroneous call on a shot she ended up hitting back into play.
But the chair umpire and tour supervisor refused to overturn the decision and Wozniacki was suddenly tied 15-15, three points from losing the match, all thanks to a gift-wrapped point from the chair to Cibulkova.
Watch enough tennis and you'll see bad calls of all stripes and colors. This is about as bad as it gets, though. It wasn't a bad call more than it was an overt irresponsibility to watch and remember the action as it unfolded.
The question then becomes: Should Cibulkova have stepped in and asked for a replay? I mean, she knew Wozniacki got the ball back. She knew the call was wrong. Yet she stood silent. In tennis, more than any sport besides golf, you'll see players call violations on themselves or change bad calls that go against their opponents. Cibulkova let a chance to be a gracious sportswoman pass. There's a line between competitiveness and cheating, and Cibulkova was closer to the latter than the former in this case.
Later, it looked like karma might catch up to her, as Wozniacki held, then broke at 4-5 to even the second set. Cibulkova, however, won the next two games and the match, with a little help from the chair.
