25 June 2003
Surely tonight Greg Rusedski has made the number one spot his own on the list of All-Time Stupidest Ways to Lose a Match of Anything. Nothing that I can think of, not even Jean van de Velde’s bit of wading, matches the slightly scary way he let a bizarre situation on a mostly irrelevant point get to him.
In case you weren’t watching: Rusedski was down by two sets, both of them lost on tie-breaks. The first was close, but in the second he capitulated. In the first game of the third set he had to fend off a number of break points from Roddick, and if he’d lost that I felt that the set was over.
He fought back, to his credit, and it seemed that he’d taken something out of Roddick by winning it. Rusedski got his first break points of the match in the next game and took one for the first break, after well over an hour’s play. At this point all seemed well, especially when Greg served to love in his next service game. Then Roddick did similar, and then Rusedski did similar again. It looked like both players were preparing for a fourth set.
30-15 on the Roddick serve, Rusedski with a backhand return onto the line. Roddick hits it deep in reply and it just — perhaps — clips the back of the baseline. A call of ‘out’ from near Rusedski, and he chips it to Roddick’s court and turns to get a towel. For his part, Roddick flicks the ball back again and goes to the umpire.
‘Who called that?’ he says. Viewers everywhere are perplexed. It transpires that the line call did not come from a line judge but someone in the crowd. Now Rusedski’s over, wanting to know what’s going on. To add the confusion, he asks for Roddick to be given a warning.
We’re told by the BBC commentary team that Rusedski’s been given the point, and I’m up in arms, absolutely convinced they should replay it. When the next point’s over, Roddick’s won the game. Huh? The point had been given to Roddick; the umpire was effectively saying that Rusedski should have ignored the line call.
I don’t know that there is a rule for this. If there is and the umpire’s applied it, then fair enough. But if there isn’t, it seems to me that the sensible thing to do would have been to replay the point. It wasn’t as if Greg was likely to break anyway.
Try telling him that. He really let this get to him, and tamely dropped his serve in the next game.
At the he treated early-evening BBC 2 viewers to a display of whiny invective that did him no credit at all. ‘You’re just going to let some wanker in the crowd change the course of the match? Well done, well done. Fucking great’ was the gist of it.
Roddick won the rest of the games to close out the match. Well done Greg, well done.