Novak Djokovic and Defaults: Do The Rules Need to Change?

Kiran Gupta unpacks the rules around disqualifications in tennis in light of the Novak Djokovic incident and questions whether the rules need to change.

A few days ago, the tennis world was stunned by the revelation that Novak Djokovic had been defaulted from the US Open. The reason? Towards the end of the first set of his quarter-final match against Pablo Carreno Busta, he hit a ball in anger towards the back of the court. Unfortunately, this ball struck a line judge who collapsed to the ground after being hit. After some discussion with tournament officials, the world number one walked off court in disgrace, refusing to do his post-match press conference and leaving behind his dream of an 18th Grand Slam.

Many questions have been posed since this incident but some have dominated news coverage. Were the rules applied correctly? Were they applied uniformly? And has this happened before?

But there are more questions that we should ask: should there be any room in the laws to allow leniency for a lack of intention? And to what degree does the application of the laws intersect with issues of prejudice, especially when thinking about the 2018 Serena Williams scandal.

The first thing to look at is the Official Grand Slam Rule-Book. Pursuant to Section ‘N’ (‘Abuse of Balls’), Djokovic is clearly in breach of the rule which states “Players shall not violently, dangerously or with anger hit, kick or throw a tennis ball within the precincts of the tournament site except in the reasonable pursuit of a point during a match (including warm-up).” Further, the rules clearly state that the supervisor has the provision to default a player who is in contravention of these rules. From observing these rules, it is pretty clear that the tournament had the right to default Djokovic if they so desired.

But has something like this happened before? And what has happened? In previous cases involving similar consequences, the outcome has always been identical. The most similar incident involved British player Tim Henman who hit a ball in anger which struck a ball kid in 1995. It could even be argued that the Henman incident had more mitigating factors as his argument was that the ball kid walked into the ball. Regardless, he was defaulted from that match and from the tournament.

There have been other similar events that have been slightly more serious that have clearly warranted the award of a default. Canadian Denis Shapovalov struck a ball which hit the umpire in the eye. Judging by the subsequent swelling on his face, it was pretty clear to see why a default was awarded in that case. Similarly, Argentine David Nalbandian kicked a line judge accidently a few years ago and it was pretty clear to see why he was disqualified.

However, other incidents muddy the line of where a disqualification should be imposed. In 2006, Roger Federer swatted a ball in an attempted trick shot which ricocheted into the ball kid. The difference here is that the ball was not hit with any form of malice and it did seem as if Federer was simply trying to hit the ball away to keep playing.

A more concerning interpretation of the rules concerns Slovenian tennis player Aljaz Bedene. Bedene hit a ball in anger at the tournament which just preceded the US Open. The ball hit the cameraman and caused no injuries. Although the supervisor was called to the court, Bedene only received a warning. The obvious difference between this and the Djokovic incident is that the cameraman made it very clear that he was not in any way affected by this whereas the linesperson fell to the ground immediately. Nonetheless, a literal interpretation of the rules would render intent irrelevant and Bedene liable for a default. In this regard, it does seem that there was some inconsistency in the application of the rules. The question to ask is whether “common sense” should be accepted in application of the rules.

The most interesting comparison is to other controversial incidents like the Serena Williams incident. Serena Williams received a game penalty for verbal abuse of the chair umpire in the 2018 US Open final, which essentially cost her the match. Whilst it has been fairly well established that Williams’ punishment itself was justified, it is most interesting to see the difference in reaction in both print media and social media. Many news outlets were particularly tough on Serena Williams after the incident, which ended up turning into racist and sexist vitriol. However, the prevailing mood following the Djokovic incident has been much more restrained. Most news outlets are interrogating whether he should have been disqualified or keeping the commentary to a very restrained level. This does beg the question of whether there is a racist or sexist element to the media coverage surrounding controversial issues in the sport. I wrote about this in more detail last year but I think this is something that needs to be interrogated further.

It becomes pretty clear that the supervisors had no choice but to default Novak Djokovic and largely, that discourse has been reflected in the media. However, this does raise other questions. It does seem as if there is some disparity in the application of the rules which needs to be tightened. This could be done through adding more precision to the rule book. However, in doing so, it raises the risk of supervisors being forced to make an important call that may not be absolutely necessary. It may not be a perfect system, but I would argue that the system has done its job here.