One of the most annoying things in tennis is the constant time violations that go unpunished especially when committed by top players on main courts at the biggest of tournaments.
It's understandable why chair umpires are cautious when warning or penalizing a top player for such a rule violation. Just Imagine what will happen if in a fifth set of a grand slam final, the score is 4-5, 30-40 with the player serving facing a break point which is in fact a match point and a championship point, and the chair umpire issues a point penalty against him that ends the match.
The game would go downhill from there for sure. No one would want to watch a match that ends in a point penalty.
In this world, TV ratings and audience numbers are determining factors for marketing the tennis events and their prize money. Ratings go down, sponsors go out of business, prize money gets down and players lose.
The game wins at the cost of the players themselves.
Enforcing the rules needs enforceable rules in the first place, and this begins with unifying these rules across all tournaments. You can't have ATP Tour tournaments allow 25 seconds between points, and grand slam tournaments that restrict the players to only 20 seconds in matches that are best of 5 sets which mean they are usually longer and more consuming.
The second thing is making the penalty effective but not crucial. This could be done by measuring the average time between points for each player during every game and if that player exceeds the limit, he is penalized in the first point in his next service game, either losing his first serve or losing a point if it's his second violation in this set. Making a player start a game at 0-15 for violating the time limit at his previous service game would put that player at a disadvantage, but not one that is as unrecoverable as when losing a point when break point down.
It's understandable why chair umpires are cautious when warning or penalizing a top player for such a rule violation. Just Imagine what will happen if in a fifth set of a grand slam final, the score is 4-5, 30-40 with the player serving facing a break point which is in fact a match point and a championship point, and the chair umpire issues a point penalty against him that ends the match.
The game would go downhill from there for sure. No one would want to watch a match that ends in a point penalty.
In this world, TV ratings and audience numbers are determining factors for marketing the tennis events and their prize money. Ratings go down, sponsors go out of business, prize money gets down and players lose.
The game wins at the cost of the players themselves.
Enforcing the rules needs enforceable rules in the first place, and this begins with unifying these rules across all tournaments. You can't have ATP Tour tournaments allow 25 seconds between points, and grand slam tournaments that restrict the players to only 20 seconds in matches that are best of 5 sets which mean they are usually longer and more consuming.
The second thing is making the penalty effective but not crucial. This could be done by measuring the average time between points for each player during every game and if that player exceeds the limit, he is penalized in the first point in his next service game, either losing his first serve or losing a point if it's his second violation in this set. Making a player start a game at 0-15 for violating the time limit at his previous service game would put that player at a disadvantage, but not one that is as unrecoverable as when losing a point when break point down.
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