Aryna Sabalenka's ball-mark photo and the tennis dilemma of electronic line calling on clay

New York Times

21-04-2025

Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.
This week, the tensions of electronic line calling on clay, the case for saying goodbye to byes, the divide between rankings and races — and too many cars on courts.
If you'd like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here.
Clay season brings with it many tennis joys: sliding; more rallies than points ended by a single serve; players not believing where the ball has bounced and arguing with umpires about it.
In Stuttgart, Germany, Aryna Sabalenka was down 3-3, 15-40 against Belgium's Elise Mertens. The world No. 1 floated a volley towards the baseline, which was called out by a line judge and so gave Mertens a break of serve. Sabalenka asked chair umpire Miriam Bley to challenge the decision. Stuttgart does not have electronic line calling (ELC) installed, so at moments of disagreement, the umpire will go to inspect a ball mark.
Advertisement
Bley confirmed the line judge's call, which meant the players sat down for a changeover at 4-3 to Mertens. During that changeover, Sabalenka used one of her team's mobile phones to take a picture of the ball mark, which earned her a code violation from Bley — and according to Sabalenka, a particularly firm handshake at the end of the match, which Sabalenka won 6-4, 6-1.
'When I gave her a handshake, there was a very interesting look and a very strong handshake, never had it before,' Sabalenka said in her on-court interview.
Later, in a news conference, she added: 'I think you cannot make these kinds of mistakes. I think you have to, if you make the mistake, I think you have to have guts to admit it and make a call.'
Sabalenka posted the photo of the ball trace to social media, which appeared to suggest that her shot had nicked the baseline — but as a recent campaign showing how ELC works on clay showed, they can be illusory. The trajectory of a shot and the amount of clay on a court can create false marks, which is not an ideal situation for umpires or players.
It could be about to get worse. As electronic line calling is more widely adopted across clay-court events — including all ATP Tour events in 2025, but not the French Open — there will be more and more situations in which players will be asked to disbelieve what their eyes are telling them, not because they are reading a mark incorrectly, but because it does not tell the whole story of where the ball bounced.
Chair umpires will then have to communicate that fact to those players, most likely on increasingly crucial points. ELC also has a margin of error built in, which means that it, like a human, is not 100 percent accurate. There might not be many more DIY line calls like Sabalenka's, but the central conflict is unlikely to go away.
James Hansen
The Tennis Grand Prix began April 14 in Stuttgart, Germany, but it took until April 19 for top seed Sabalenka to play her first match: a quarterfinal against Mertens, who had beaten two players for the right to face the world No. 1.
Sabalenka was not competing in an exhibition event, but in a WTA 500 event, two rungs below the Grand Slams, which makes this kind of situation feel deeply unsatisfactory.
Advertisement
She reached the last eight without playing a match because she was given a bye through the first round, and then Russia's Anastasia Potapova pulled out of their second-round match because of injury. The second of those two incidents exposes the folly of the first. Draws of only 32 players should surely not include byes: not only does entering the tournament for the round of 16 feel too late, but it means the tournament is only one withdrawal away from a player being three wins from a title — and the 500 ranking points and prize money attached — without hitting a ball.
For the tournament, the bye is a necessary carrot to attract the best players in the world. WTA 500s are not mandatory, and players of Sabalenka's ranking have to play six per year. There are 17, plus the United Cup, on the WTA Tour calendar for 2025. Events of that level need to bank on stars coming to attract ticket sales, as well as the sponsorships and media deals that help fund the events' existence.
One solution would be to have a 'lucky loser' mechanism only for the draw slots against those players who received byes. Tennis players instinctively recoil at this suggestion, believing it's against the spirit of competition for someone who's lost a match to remain in the event, but is it really so different to receive a lucky-loser spot against someone who is yet to play a match than it is to receive one from qualifying to the first round, as can happen in every tennis event?
Surely everyone would benefit, including the player with the free path to the quarterfinals — in this case, Sabalenka. Not playing a match for nearly a week is not ideal preparation for a change in surface from hard courts to clay, and she described the situation following Potapova's withdrawal as 'awkward.'
It didn't deter from reaching the final, in which she will play Jelena Ostapenko. It takes place today (Monday, April 21) after a pause in play on April 19 to observe the Good Friday holiday.
Charlie Eccleshare
Different tennis players have different methods for measuring where they are in their season's journey.
Some take the long view, loyalists to where they are in the overall ATP or WTA rankings. They measure performance during the previous 52 weeks from any given date and define the seedings for tournaments, as well as determining who gets straight in to a given event and who has to qualify.
Advertisement
Ben Shelton, who reached the Munich Open final, says the only thing he pays attention to is the tally of points he has won during the current season. For the men, those points make up the 'Race to Turin' in Italy; for the women, it's the 'Race to Riyadh' in Saudi Arabia. They are the venues for the season-ending ATP and WTA Tour Finals, in which the top eight players for the year meet.
Those tournaments take place in November, which is when the rankings and the races end up singing from the same hymn sheet. Before that, they can spit out some pretty disparate data on who is the best in the world and who is the best in the world right now, which can indicate which players are having good seasons and which ones are projected for a downswing.
On the women's side, Sabalenka is at the top of both ladders. After that, things get a bit messy. Coco Gauff is the world No. 4 but No. 11 in the race. Jasmine Paolini is world No. 6, but 14th for 2025 so far. Clara Tauson of Denmark is 21st in the rankings, but 7th in the race.
There is a similar disorder for the men. Jannik Sinner, who returns from a three-month doping ban at the start of May, is still No. 3 in the race, having played just one event. Carlos Alcaraz is No. 3 in the world but No. 1 in the race; Alexander Zverev is No. 2 in both.
Taylor Fritz, who has a career-high world ranking of No. 4, has been battling an abdominal injury most of the year. That's left him at No. 17 in the race. Jakub Menšík, the Miami Open champion, is ninth in the race but still outside the top 20 in the rankings. Then there's Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, 9th on the year and 29th in the rankings, and Daniil Medvedev, No. 10 in the world but No. 20 for the year.
As for Shelton, he's likely feeling good. He's the world No. 13, but No. 8 in the race. For him, that's what. counts.
Matt Futterman
Forgive yourself if you caught some tennis during the past week and wondered why there were so many cars on the center courts. This is the world of sports sponsorship: why have a logo emblazoned all over the walls of a tennis venue when the real product can just pop up court-side instead?
In Stuttgart, there were three in situ for the Porsche-sponsored Tennis Grand Prix. The middle one is a Macan Turbo, the prize for this year's winner. The blue one on the left is a Taycan Turbo GT. The white one on the right is a 911 Carrera T. Nearly every year, the event prompts some banter between players and interviewers — especially in 2024, when Elena Rybakina won the title and the car and promptly had to confess that she didn't have a driver's license.
Advertisement
Sabalenka, who has lost three finals in Stuttgart, has long lamented her inability to win the Macon Turbo. Yes, she could easily afford to buy one, but that's not the same.
Over in Munich for the Munich Open, the men competed in the shadow of an offering from the tournament's lead sponsor, BMW. The winner there gets a car, too: the electric BMW I5.
Then there is Barcelona, where organizers placed a Lexus LBX on a platform in the corner of the main stadium. Lexus is a major sponsor of the ATP Tour. Sadly, the Barcelona winner doesn't get a car: he just gets to jump fully clothed into a nearby pool with a bunch of ballkids, as Holger Rune did after beating Alcaraz.
But none of these tournaments can hold a candle to the Delray Beach Open in Florida. That too has a BMW in situ, but it's on the court itself and fans can sit in it, if they want to have a disrupted view of a tennis match. That probably sounds like an accident waiting to happen, and at the 2022 event, Stefan Kozlov scraped the car while trying to return a serve from Tommy Paul.
Thanks to YouTube user 'Ryan The First Avenger,' the world can see what it looks like to watch from inside the vehicle.
Matt Futterman
🎾 ATP:
🏆 Holger Rune def. Carlos Alcaraz (1) 7-6(6), 6-2 to win the Barcelona Open (500) in Barcelona, Spain. It is his first ATP Tour title since April 2023.
🏆 Alexander Zverev (1) def. Ben Shelton (2) 6-2, 6-4 to win the Munich Open (500) in Munich. It is the German's third Munich Open title.
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Elina Svitolina (1) def. Olga Danilović (3) 6-4, 7-6(8) to win the Rouen Open (250) in Rouen, France. It is the Ukrainian's 18th WTA Tour title.
📈 Alexander Zverev moves up one place from No. 3 to No. 2 after his win in Munich.
📈 Olga Danilović ascends five spots from No. 39 to No. 34 after her run to the final in Rouen — a new career high.
📈 Holger Rune reenters the top 10 after rising four spots from No. 13 to No. 9.
📉 Casper Ruud falls 5 places from No. 10 to No. 15.
📉 Marta Kostyuk drops 11 places from No. 25 to No. 36, falling outside the seeding cut-off of No. 32.
📉 Jan-Lennard Struff tumbles 29 spots from No. 51 to No. 78.
🎾 ATP
📍Madrid: Madrid Open (1,000) featuring Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev, Novak Djokovic, Joao Fonseca.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV
🎾 WTA
📍Madrid: Madrid Open (1,000) featuring Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Świątek, Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men's and women's tours continue.