The Mark Of Complexity: On the Nadal-Goffin Call in Monte Carlo

The devil is in the details, mon ami.

Hercule Poirot, being a good Belgian, certainly appreciated that pearl of wisdom in his detective work. One can only wonder how he would litigate the call which sabotaged fellow Belgian David Goffin's attempt to make his first Masters 1000 final on Saturday in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France.

Let's cut right to the chase: Up 3-2 and serving at game point in the first set, Goffin won the point on a ball from Nadal that was multiple inches behind the baseline. The crowd applauded Goffin winning the point and the game. Then, several seconds later, umpire Cedric Mourier checked a mark and said the shot was good. Replay showed the ball was well beyond the baseline, removed from any "margin of error" discussion which sometimes clouds the issue of correct calls on clay. (More on that shortly.) Nevertheless, the point was replayed, Goffin lost it.

The aftermath: Following a prolonged battle in that sixth game, Nadal broke Goffin for 3-3, instead of the Belgian getting a 4-2 lead. After that plot twist, Goffin disintegrated, barely putting up a fight the rest of the way, winning only two games. The 6-3, 6-1 match was not a revealer of tennis acumen or current form. It was a throwaway, in that the emotional tenor and competitive zest -- for Goffin and the crowd -- were sucked out of the afternoon in an instant. Nadal's victory isn't tainted, but the flow of the match was heavily influenced by that mistake from Mourier. We did not get a true measurement of either player's skill precisely because the fight essentially stopped as soon as Nadal broke for 5-3, confirming Goffin's loss of competitive appetite.

The call cast a shadow over the proceedings. That's why I'm not writing about this match at Patreon, where I try to appraise players and celebrate the sport of tennis. This is the place where I write about the messy (sometimes ugly) and inconvenient, maybe even dark, truths about tennis as it relates to the larger theater of human endeavor. (Both sites, though, are powered by your donations and will continue to be.)

Let's dive into anything and (almost) everything about this call:

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First, should Nadal have conceded the point?

Immediately, the devil in the details emerges.

It is true that tennis carries an honor code in much the same way golf does. Solo-performer sports do put more of an onus on the individual athletes to police themselves... and that's precisely the point:

THEMSELVES... not the chair umpire.

When Fernando Gonzalez watched a shot hit his racquet late in the 2008 Summer Olympic semifinals, the occurrence involved Gonzalez himself: his body, his racquet. Yet, he denied the ball hit his racquet.

One could make the case that it's the umpire's job to see the ball hitting the racquet, but the honor code of tennis would reasonably demand that Gonzalez self-police that particular call -- his body was at the center of the call. (A double-bounce before a player tries to hit a ball? Similar, but not the same thing -- that's solely for the umpire to determine. A double-hit? That's murky territory, but closer to what the player should personally police. A player touching the net? Definitely on the player to self-police -- that's why Milos Raonic versus Juan Martin del Potro in Canada a few years ago caused such a storm.)

Details shape these arguments about expectations of player conduct. Ultimately, certain kinds of calls involve the actual player, while others involve the ball and the line in the more empirical "see the ball, make the call" play umpires are paid to make.

Here's where the next layer of complexity enters the picture: Let's say for the sake of argument that a player should still be expected to self-police these "ball and line" calls. Are we crossing the line between hopes and expectations?

Let me offer an example from a different sport to make the point about hopes and expectations.

It is very hard to win American football championships at academically strict schools. Places such as Northwestern University, Vanderbilt University, Stanford, Duke, and similar institutions have higher academic requirements for allowing football players, which makes it tougher to get the best football players in the country.

Northwestern won the famous (in America) Rose Bowl game in 1949, and didn't reach the Rose Bowl for another 47 years. However, Northwestern broke the drought in 1996 and returned to the event, touching off a massive celebration in the Chicago-area school.

After that event happened, a lot of college sports commentators in America wondered why Vanderbilt and Duke and California at Berkeley couldn't win at a high level. Among some people -- including those in the press -- it became an EXPECTATION, or something close to it, for football coaches at academic schools to succeed on the field.

This is the basic construct of the difference between hopes and expectations. A hope is for the best, for a maximum of conduct or performance. An expectation is for a minimum standard, a threshold which -- if not met -- is completely unacceptable.

Simplified: Hopes are for the ceiling, expectations are for the floor.

Would it be great and wonderful if Rafael Nadal acted toward Goffin the way Tim Smyczek acted toward Nadal in Australia a few years ago? Sure... but the point to emphasize is that Smyczek demonstrated sportsmanship at a remarkable and uncommonly high level. What he did was not normal, but exemplary. He went above and beyond.

We should HOPE that all athletes can rise to the Smyczek standard, but we should not EXPECT it. We should desire that Rafa concede the point, but we should not DEMAND it, the key underlying point being that if we EXPECT Rafa to concede the point, we view him as unsportsmanlike or displaying poor form and behavior if he fails to concede the point.

This is all very similar to the uproar on Twitter after the Roger Federer-Nick Kyrgios match in Miami. Many people EXPECTED Federer to lecture and admonish the crowd, and viewed his behavior as unacceptable when he failed to do so. Sure, we should all HOPE Federer could have thrown in a carefully-worded statement which sent the proper message without offending anyone -- it would be GREAT if iconic athletes could walk that fine line and wield their power that effectively.

However, should we EXPECT it, and consequently, rip that athlete to shreds when he doesn't meet that standard?

It's all very unfair and out of proportion. EXPECTATIONS, once again, should refer to minimum standards of behavior, the basics, the absolute baseline below which no athlete or public figure should fall.

Asking an athlete -- who sells tickets and who economically fuels his sport by winning admiration from ticket-buying fans -- to lecture fans goes against the athlete's basic job description. Therefore, that's not a minimum standard of behavior one is asking for. That's a radical and dramatic request from a person to a public figure. That is, very simply, an ambitious HOPE... but for many, it is an expectation. The mismatch is clear, the truth quite inconvenient.

Now, to the next tension point on this issue:

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that players SHOULD still be aggressive in self-policing errant "ball and line" calls. Among the "ball and line" calls a player has a reasonable chance of seeing, what would rate highly on the list?

One's own baseline and one's own half of the court obviously come in first. This is where a 3-inch out call such as the Nadal-Goffin ball is hard for a player to miss. The play is right in front of them -- Goffin knew this at his end of the court, after all.

In terms of calls on the other side of the net, the call a player can most readily see is the same sideline when he hits a down-the-line shot. Had Nadal hit a down-the-line forehand instead of going crosscourt topspin on the shot which was out, he would have had a better view. The opposite corner's baseline does not rise to the level of a ball a tennis player should easily see. Moreover, when the linesperson correctly called the ball out, Nadal put his head down and prepared for the first point of the 4-2 game... but then Cedric Mourier intervened and screwed up.

One has to realize a few things here: First, the reality of the chair umpire intervening inserted Mourier into the incident. It's not as though Mourier instantly announced an overrule from the chair, something which -- in the immediate moment -- Nadal could have conceivably shot down. Mourier went to check the mark -- which inserts a degree of personalism into the episode -- and then made the wrong call. That's a layer of umpire involvement an opposing player could easily find unwelcome, to the point that contesting the call isn't worth the trouble.

Moreover, let's step back and realize that this very scenario -- Mourier coming down to check the mark -- would not have happened in any non-clay tournament. Hawkeye would have existed. Tennis players have become conditioned to use Hawkeye as the arbiter for disputed calls, so demanding -- as an EXPECTATION -- that Rafa step into overturn the call becomes less tenable from that vantage point.

For those who say Hawkeye should be used on clay, a reminder: Victoria Chiesa -- one of the most knowledgeable and thoughtful people in tennis in terms of owning complete command of the rulebook and proper officiating procedures -- has long explained why the device can't be used on clay. It is a simple fact of life that on clay, umpires can't make the mistakes Mourier made on Saturday...

... which is why, if the people who govern tennis (long a weak point of tennis as an organized sport) want to do something about Saturday's injustice, they will prevent Mourier from working at Roland Garros. Referees across various sports are graded on performance, and the better ones work playoff games or more significant events. Mourier has not made the cut, end of story. THAT would be a constructive, productive reaction to Saturday's events at the Monte Carlo Country Club.

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Finally, let's deal with David Goffin's complete collapse after the call. A number of devilish details need to be sorted through on this point.

First, yes, athletes always have to play through bad calls. It is something every athlete must learn. Goffin had the rest of his match to play, and he didn't handle it well. That point stands... but it shouldn't be given a lot of weight.

We tell athletes -- by "we" I refer to both fans and couch-pundits such as myself -- to "act like you've been there before."

A key point about Goffin: He had never played Rafael Nadal before in a regular tour match. He had never beaten top-10 players back-to-back before. He had never made a clay Masters 1000 semifinal before. This was all very new to him. If Roger Federer or Novak Djokovic had endured this same fate, fans would be very much up in arms, but there would have been more of an expectation that Fed or Nole wouldn't have melted into a puddle the way Goffin did.

Secondly, let's acknowledge that the out call had been made first. For a moment, Goffin's mind dwelt in a world where he was up 4-2, only for Mourier to pull him out of that context. Let's say that Mourier immediately overruled the linesperson, or -- as a hypothetical -- that the linesperson called the ball in, and Mourier did not overrule. Goffin never would have arrived at the conscious thought, "I am now up 4-2," even though he SHOULD have been.

No, Goffin DID think that he had -- past tense -- forged a 4-2 lead, only for Mourier to alter the outcome. That often carries more psychological weight, and as an important postscript, it's something Nadal probably didn't anticipate, which should reduce the extent to which one should have EXPECTED him to have intervened.

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The devil is in the details, folks. Change any of several details about the Nadal-Goffin call, and the expectations of what various parties should have done (as opposed to hopes) could reasonably shift in a given direction, or to a given degree.

Alas, the details exist in their present form. We can only deal with the hand we're dealt... and that in many ways refers to the helpless Nadal more than the luckless Goffin on Saturday.