RiskyBusiness
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- Mar 20, 2011
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A three inch ball traveling 70+ mph can look like a blur against a two inch thick line. Added to the difficulty of calling the lines accurately is most players are primarily concentrating on to trying to play the ball/shot with a secondary peripheral focus to see if it's in. Many times it is a really tight call. Most of the time you give the opponent the benefit of the doubt. However in bigger, tighter matches many people tend to have a more strict interpretation. That 50/50 ball that may have previously been in becomes out. For the majority I wouldn't call it deliberate hooking per se, just more of giving themselves all the ones that are too close to call.
That being said, there are definitely those who deliberately cheat, but I feel like they are the minority. However since this is Duke we are talking about the chances of blatant cheating do increase greatly!
The umpire is probably not going to overrule a close call. Also, he overruled the kid 4 times.
I understand your point of view however, as there are many good kids who play honest tennis. My step-son had a point to win the NC State Championship for his team. He thought a ball was going out and let it go. He stopped, shook his head and called it in. His team still won pretty easily.
It does bring up a funny story on handling cheaters. His teammate was playing a kid from Statesville who was a very good player, but known to be a little loose with line calls. He called a ball out and my son's teammate called him on it. This was in the state playoffs. The very next ball that the kid hit was about ten feet within the lines. The teammate called it out and asked the guy if he was now ready to play tennis.
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