It's Pretty Remarkable That This Embarrassing End To A Tennis Match Is A First Time Occurrence

Worst match point in history? by Kiki Bertens. #Fail #IPTL pic.twitter.com/wMaW5q9LJN

— We Are Tennis (@WeAreTennis) December 7, 2016

FTW- “Under IPTL rules, once a ball is tossed into the air for a serve, the serving motion must be completed.

“This, then, meant that Bertens had no choice but to try to serve despite her poor toss. The problem was that Bertens hesitated — clearly forgetting about the IPTL rule and planning to bail on the toss.”



​For starters, I laughed. I mean, of course I laughed. Even Kiki Bertens' family and friends had to laugh on the inside as the match point bounced off the side of her face and fell haplessly to the court. Taking all the circumstances out of it, that video is just flat out funny and I think even the person that was on the ass end of it would agree when not standing in front of a couple thousand people in the viewing audience who were slowly dying from second hand embarrassment.

That said, aren't the circumstances kind of set up for something like this to happen? In every other tennis league and association you can take a mulligan on a shitty toss, but not in the IPTL? Seems like a pretty weird/common rule to change unless you're hoping that one of your players suffers from some mid-serve forgetfulness and makes her/himself look like a complete jackass. I can't say I totally felt bad for her because that would be disingenuous coming from someone that let out an audible chuckle while watching a video of the very moment that she was praying she disappeared. However, I will say she was set up for failure. It was only a matter of time before this quirk in the basic guidelines of tennis had somebody frozen into submission like the Wile E. Coyote looking up at an anvil. If I had to assign blame I would say it's 60% IPTL and 40% Kiki Bertens, and that's not too bad considering how ridiculously Hellen Keller-ish she looked taking one to the face from herself.