When a ball fell out of Taylor Fritz’s pocket on consecutive points during the eighth game of the third set of his third-round battle with Stefanos Tsitsipas, anyone watching got a free lesson in how lets are handled in such situations.
“I’ve never seen it twice in a row,” commentator Barry Cowan remarked as the bizarre sequence unfolded in Shanghai.
It was surprising to learn, after the point at 30-all went to video review, that a let is only officially granted after a ball falls out of a player’s pocket when the umpire makes the call.
In this case, Adel Nour made the call just after Fritz struck an errant forehand. By the time the call was made, the ball had already spilled out of the American’s pocket and clearly could have hindered his shot. (He would have been thinking, ‘Oh, here’s a let,’ rather than focusing on hitting a proper shot, right?)
But after a review, Fritz’s forehand was ruled out because he struck it before Nour audibly called the let.
Fritz accepted the ruling and moved on.
On the very next point, when another ball fell out of the American’s pocket, the previous decision had a huge impact. It happened to be match point, with Fritz serving at 2-5, 30-40 in the third set. When the ball came out during the rally, Nour eventually called another let, but did not penalize Fritz with the loss of the point because, technically, he hadn’t officially awarded Fritz a let on the previous point. Fritz’s forehand had already been deemed out before the let call was made.
So Fritz got new life in the game and went on to hold serve.
Curiously, on the 30-40 point, Nour didn’t call the let until Tsitsipas protested after missing an inside-out forehand. Nour ruled that the point should be replayed, and Fritz went on to serve himself out of trouble, saving three more match points later in the game before holding in a high-level game.
Tsitsipas didn’t let the controversy of the penultimate game bother him. He served out the match with relative ease, converting his fifth match point to win 3-6, 7-5, 6-3.
He signed the camera with a bizarre mathematical equation afterward – perhaps an allusion to the complex nature of the sport, its scoring system and the byzantine rules that govern it.
“It was an assessment of today’s match,” Tsitsipas said. “I found a good answer.”
Tsitsipas moves on to face Daniil Medvedev in the round of 16 in Shanghai.
The resurgent Greek, a semifinalist in Shanghai in 2019, improves to 5-2 against Fritz. He recorded his 400th career win in the second round, defeating Luciano Darderi.
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