Daniil Medvedev was agitated—as he sometimes gets. He was having trouble closing out Alexandre Muller, a player ranked 28 spots behind him, in Monte Carlo on Wednesday. At one stage in the second set, a Muller serve landed close to the service line. No call came, and Medvedev eventually lost the point.
When the rally was over, the Russian took a few steps into the court and craned his neck to try to see if the serve had left a mark. “Here we go,” I thought, assuming we were about to get a full Meddy meltdown when he discovered an indent on the clay that showed the serve had been out. Instead, he turned away immediately and moved onto the next game. He even kept his cool long enough to win the match in three sets.
Once upon a time—i.e., for the entirety of clay-court history until last year—that scenario may have played out much differently, lasted much longer, and become much more heated.
You remember how it went: A player points at a mark with his racquet that shows his opponent’s shot was out. The chair umpire jumps down from his or her perch. Player and umpire take turns bending down to inspect the mark and make a case for whether it was in or out. If they disagree, each becomes more demonstrative, and they start bending down and standing back up more quickly, like a pair of pigeons pecking at bird feed.
