NEW YORK: The United States Tennis Association (USTA) announced on Wednesday that it will be implementing the “in-game innovations” (read shot clock terms and conditions) this summer which were agreed upon by the ATP and WTA, the men’s and the women’s tour of tennis respectively.
The three organizations have consulted and collaborated with each other on these rule changes, which have been created to increase the speed of the game and ensuring more uniform enforcement standards.
Some of the innovations include the much-debated shot clock, which means that a player has only 25 seconds between the chair umpire declaring the score of the game and the serve for the next point being completed. The umpire will start a clock and will issue a time violation to the player, if he or she doesn’t adhere to the rule. Although the exact location has yet to be determined, a clock will be placed in a position visible to players, fans and the umpire.
There will be a warm-up clock introduced as well, which will be in two phases. The 1-minute clock will begin when the second player/team entering the court arrives at their chair(s). If at the end of that 1 minute, a player is not at the net, they will be notified by the umpire and subject to a post-match fine. This will not be a time violation.
Secondly, following that a 5-minute time clock will begin following the coin toss to initiate the warm-up period. During this time, the umpire will make announcements informing the players of the 3-minute, 2-minute, 1-minute, 30-seconds, and end-of-warm-up marks. At the end of 5 minutes, a 1-minute countdown will be held. At the end of this countdown, a player must be ready to play otherwise they could be charged a post-match fine.
Besides US Open, which is the last Grand Slam of the year, hard court tournaments in USA and Canada such as Citi Open (Washington, D.C.), Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic (San Jose, Calif.), Rogers Cup (Montreal and Toronto, Canada), Western & Southern Open (Cincinnati, Ohio), Connecticut Open (New Haven, Conn.), and Winston-Salem Open (Winston-Salem, N.C.) will be following the rules as well.
