It's official...

If you are a reasonably big sports fan, you have probably noticed that those paid to umpire, officiate, and/or referee sporting events are under tremendous scrutiny lately. You might even say that there have been so many erroneous calls in recent high profile contests, that the overall grade for officials is pretty darn awful, to put it kindly.

What, pray tell, do we attribute this to? Could it be simply that game happenings have just become too fast, and perhaps too fast for the human eye? Perhaps one could suggest that with the recent cases of officials involved in gambling, that some are ruling incorrectly in order to gain financially for themselves or other parties higher up in some organized crime faction, if there is such a thing. Or maybe it is just that some officials have such grandiose egos that they want to play a bigger role in determining the final result.

Sports aficionados often remark that the best officials are the ones that you never notice. This is probably true. You do not often see a correct call being made and think to yourself, shoot-howdy that was a good call! You do however, regularly here loudly stated curse words, suggestions on where officials can go to, and of course, the old favorite of sarcastic commentary on said officials eye sight, when a call is made incorrectly.

Tennis is not devoid of bad calls. Clearly, a professional sports institution that introduces instant replay, better known as the challenge system, realizes that officials make bad calls from time to time and that bad calls should be corrected. I can live with this. I too have been an appeals judge for tennis matches. It is certainly difficult to be 100% sure of calls when a ball is traveling over 100 miles per hour and the place of landing is not directly in front of you. As a result, I can cut the officials some slack here.

However, what really squeezes my lemons is that those paid to keep order and make impartial rulings often do not know the rules that they are supposed to be enforcing. It seems odd to me that, as a coach, I have to constantly remind officials of the rules that they should indeed know better than I do. In addition, the smugness of many is something I could do without. It’s like dealing with my older brother in that he is always right and I am always wrong, no matter what, no ifs, ands, or buts. Too many officials insist that they are always correct simply because they wear that blue and red polo shirt. I really don’t think so...

I recently viewed the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, being interviewed by David Letterman. Mr. Selig felt that baseball umpires were correct in their calls 99% of the time. That really is not a meaningful statistic, nor one that I care about. What I want to know is what percentage of the close calls are made correctly. I mean, as far as tennis is concerned, anybody can call a serve that lands in the center of the service box correctly, but it is the shots that are close to the lines that determine judgement, or the lack there of.

Of course, in light of recent events, officials have colossal incentive to rule correctly. After all, I do not suppose that any tennis official is looking forward to the beating of a lifetime similar to a WWE superstar Mark Henry (billed as the world’s strongest man shown below) power slam from Serena Williams (resemblance unintentional) if they should make a poor call or announce an untimely foot fault.

Nuff said...