Andy Roddick has had his say on Frances Tiafoe’s expletive-laden rant at the umpire during the Shanghai Masters.
After an umpire stripped away Frances Tiafoe’s first serve at 5-5 in the deciding tie-break, the loss of the following two points sealed the American’s fate.
Shaking hands with Roman Safiullin at the next, Tiafoe hurled a litany of colorful insults towards the umpire, who he felt cost him the match.
Known for his charisma and personality on the circuit, it was a rather troubling reminder of how poorly players behave on tour.
Indeed, Tiafoe’s outburst was one of many over the week in Shanghai as the ATP’s brightest aired their various grievances, often loudly, definitely unfairly towards the officials.
Andy Roddick takes issue with ‘dumb rule’ after Frances Tiafoe’s umpire outburst
With the shot-clock running down, Tiafoe threw the ball up but didn’t hit it, in what was quite a blatant attempt to try and work around the rule.
He claimed that because he’d started his service motion, he shouldn’t have been awarded a time violation and loss of serve. Nonetheless, Tiafoe issued an apology after the incident.
Andy Roddick gave a conflicting account, both acknowledging Tiafoe’s poor showing of himself, as well as what he labelled a ‘dumb rule’.
On his podcast ‘Served’, he said: “I tend to laugh about these things more than I probably should. The shot clock, the easiest way to reset it is to fake a toss,” Roddick said.
“The ruling on Frances basically was that he didn’t pretend enough to make it think it was a realistic attempt. If we are going letter of the law it should have reset when Frances tossed the ball, no matter what it looked like. If you are going to let everyone get away with it, all year long, but because they are faking and going around this, because of this dumb rule where the toss isn’t part of the serve which I’ll never believe.
“If you catch a toss that should be a fault, that’s the simplest way. This was happening where people would be down to one or two on the shot clock, fake toss, catch it and then they are allowed as much time as they want.
“They go through the full toss, bouncing the ball, it’s almost a net negative if you allow this rule. Frances didn’t do anything different than anyone has done all year but apparently if you mock it it’s too far, if you do it and pretend you’re being real it’s fine.”
Keen however to address that Tiafoe was fortunate to escape serious fall-out, Roddick added: “He tapped out, he made a mistake, probably lucky he didn’t get suspended, probably felt more like a fine was a win at that point but I am more annoyed by the allowance of the toss and then switching the rules of someone making a mockery of something that is stupid in the first place.”
Are ATP player outbursts becoming a real problem?
Something seemed to be going around in Shanghai as an already rather spoilt roster of tennis players, came together to be unpleasant to officials.
Alexander Zverev blamed his own lack of success in Grand Slam finals on poor umpire decisions after disputing a call. Instant replays however showed that the ball bounced twice before Zverev got his racquet to it.
Sky Sports pundit Jonathan Overend was left seething after Novak Djokovic’s umpire outburst, where he grilled the official on a rule change he obviously had no part in making.
While Stefanos Tsitsipas and others were keen to add their name to this growing list of hard done by players, it forms a troubling trend.
While rules might be changing slightly and umpires very occasionally make a mistake, the sheer amount of rage shown by players is striking. It feels like something the ATP are going to have to get a real grip on before it spirals even further out of control.
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