The COVID-19 public health crisis and the suspension of the NCAA, ATP and WTA tennis seasons bring to mind a long-simmering hygiene problem in professional tennis.
As the Governor of New York announced his quarantine order yesterday, closing non-essential businesses and asking citizens to stay in their homes, a wave of relief came over me. Somebody in government has finally taken a bold step to thwart the scourge of COVID-19 and to mitigate its effects, flatten the curve, until our best and brightest scientists and doctors can get ahead of this predicted global pandemic. With tennis lessons on hiatus, a porch bench sanded and painted, and no Miami Open to watch on TV, the post I’ve been meaning to write since February is finally on the screen before me. Play The Let, Quarantine Edition: Tennis has a hygiene problem and there couldn’t be a better time to discuss it and hopefully make a lasting change.
I was reminded of this hygiene issue while sitting courtside at the New York ATP 250 event at Nassau Coliseum last month. The #4 seed was ill. He had received a bye in the first round and had beaten Marcos Giron handily to set up a quarterfinal with upcoming Serbian, Miomir Kecmanovic. As the match with Kecmanovic wore on, it was clear the #4 was ailing. His eyes were glassy. He was walking slowly between points, clearing his throat repeatedly on changeovers. He was the higher seed, but he was on his way to losing in 3 sets and he did not look or sound well. His nose was running. Then I saw it. The player called for his towel with the universal hand to face gesture. A ball person, a young lady from Queens College who had volunteered to assist the players at this tournament, ran the towel out from the corner. The player proceeded to blow his nose right into the towel and hand it back to the girl. Disgusted, the ballgirl held as little of the towel as possible, returning it to a hook in the corner of the court. The match continued. Not a word from the chair umpire. No acknowledgement whatsoever from the player.
This may seem like an extreme circumstance of unsanitary behavior from a barely adult touring tennis pro. However, as a supposed first-ballot member of the Ball Person Hall of Fame, I can attest that mucus is par for the course when it comes to tour players and their towels. Tennis players wipe sweat, blood and who knows what else onto their towels. At some stage in the late ’90s, something that was considered taboo in society somehow became the norm on the tennis court; expecting somebody else (ball people specifically) to carry a used towel.
Ball people used to just manage the balls. They were never asked to hand players their towels. This changed during the decade that I worked at the U.S. Open. I was in college and working one of my final U.S. Opens as a ball person. Tennis fashion was changing. The utilitarian headband and sweatbands made popular during the ’70s and ’80s had given way to more “stylish” bandannas and hats in the ’90s. These new accessories, while selling like hotcakes at the concession stand, did not get the job done in managing sweat. By the late ’90s, I observed more and more players bringing towels out on court.
At first, players would bring the towel out and hang it on the fence or throw it on the ground near the fence. They would visit the towel intermittently, when needed. Visiting the towel, whether necessary or not, became a tool to help players refocus, to take a breath and consider their plan for the next point. Though I’m sure he is not the first, Greg Rusedski is the player who comes to mind when I think of ball people being asked to run the towel from the fence to the player. I worked a U.S. Open semifinal of his and I probably ran his towel a greater distance than he ran the entire match. Of course, visiting the towel also became a ploy to throw off the rhythm of an opponent. So use of the towel gradually fell under the hawkish eyes of chair umpires concerned about pace of play. Somewhere between efficiency and expedience, the task of speeding towel usage fell to ball people.
Why not? The player has to be ready for the next point. Ball people, who spend most of their time standing at attention, are talented enough to handle two jobs simultaneously; moving the balls around the court and delivering player towels. After all, ball people are somehow now responsible for drying wet courts, garbage disposal, serving players drinks, peeling their bananas, delivering coffee, and putting on pointless showy displays for the crowd.
With the onus on ball people, players now use the towel incessantly. The result is longer matches. When umpires enforce pace of play rules, players blame the ball people who can’t deliver fast enough. The ATP considered the pace of play aspect serious enough in 2018 to test new towel rules, forcing players to manage their own towels. However, what is missing from consideration is the matter of hygiene.
In the early days of this public health crisis (last week), a New York City tennis club sent out an email reminder that it was still open for business and that tennis already features the social distancing of a 78 foot court. Of course, it’s difficult for players to avoid holding the ball. I would be interested to see a study on how a virus fares in the felt of a ball being struck repeatedly, experiencing the abrasion of court surface and strings, while repeatedly losing and returning to shape. I’ll never forget the man who got himself banned from a tennis club for wiping his sweaty brow with the ball before each serve. He considered it a sort of legal spitball, a competitive advantage for the sweaty. His partners and opponents considered it disgusting and complained enough that club management ultimately had to send him on his way. What professional tennis players do to ball people with towels is actually more disgusting, unsanitary and despicable and it’s time the tours put a stop to it:
COVID-19 provides an opportunity to return tennis to sanitary sanity. Indeed, before they canceled the event entirely, Indian Wells banned players from giving their towels to ball people. The ball people would also wear gloves. In a global pandemic, these measures make sense. Even in normal times, players don’t know what ball people have on their hands and vice versa. Players travel all over the world and are probably more likely to be carriers of exotic pathogens than a volunteer 14 year old from Cincinnati. Hence, professional tennis should permanently adopt the rule that players handle their own towels. Put hooks at the back of the court where they can access towels quickly. Let the ball people focus on moving balls around the court and running for no reason. Pace of play will improve and so will hygiene.
Jeff Menaker
Play The Let 