Roger Federer Has Always Hated the Challenge System, For Good Reason

In case you missed it yesterday, Roger Federer had, by his standards, a massive blow-up over the challenge system. At 4-4 in the third set of the Men’s Championship, Juan Martin del Potro took an exorbitant amount of time before deciding to challenge game point. He lost the challenge, but that didn’t keep Federer from unleashing some anger. The video (warning: there is an s-bomb at the end):

Three points about this 40-second clip:

1. Federer’s internal clock is as precise as his tennis game: del Potro took a full 10 seconds before he decided to challenge the call.

2. The challenge system obviously needs to be overhauled. Currently, the evolution of nearly every challenge is as such: ball is ruled in or out; player leisurely strolls over to the mark to have a look; player asks chair umpire his thoughts, chair ump is indecisive (why risk being wrong?); player weighs his options, decides it’s worth a challenge, ‘cause hey, why let ‘em go to waste? The player could use a breather anyhow.

3. Federer has always hated the challenge system. And do you know why? Because he is smarter than all of us. His thoughts from ‘07 when they first started using it:

“I think it’s nonsense,” he said. “Now they can hide even more behind these calls. We would like to be able to rely a little bit on umpires. They tend to now just let us do the work, the tough stuff. They let us get embarrassed, basically.“Correct. As it is now, the chair umpire has three jobs: Call out the score, keep track of the time on changeovers and request new balls. As much as Federer would like to see it happen, the Hawk-Eye system isn’t going away. But the least chair umps could do is put their foot down on players taking too long to challenge.

How about a two second rule? One Mississippi, two Mississippi: If you haven’t challenged by then, too bad. No looking at the spot, checking with the player’s box or asking the ump. If you think the call’s wrong, challenge. If not, that’s cool too. But we have a match to play here, so let’s move it along.

(Speaking of, perhaps it’s time to put the clock on players taking too much time between serves as well. Do you really need to bounce the ball 37 times before you decide that it is, in fact, bouncy enough to be serviced?)