Rules of Tennis

Yesterday we saw a perfect case of why the injury rules in tennis need to be changed. Sloane Stephens was ready to serve having saved 5 match points on Azarenka's serve to get back on serve in the 2nd set. Only problem is Azarenka took not one, but two medical timeouts that totalled 10 minutes. I was watching Azarenka's service game and I saw no signs of any injury from her. She choked your opportunities away and was possibly feeling fatigue, but choking and fatigue are not injuries.

Now, who knows what would have happened if Sloane's momentum was not slowed down by these "injuries." Certainly Sloane only held serve twice in the whole match, so one could argue the point that she would have lost anyways. We will never know the real answer though because Azarenka was able to take an injury timeout and go inside and collect herself. She told us in the on-court interview right after the match herself that she needed to take a breath. She didn't mention her rib or her knee that the match officials said they were "treating."

I am not quite sure how tennis can fix faking injuries for a timeout entirely. We see it in all the sports these days from slowing down the offense in football or wasting time in a soccer match. Two things I would like to see tennis do is that you cannot call the trainer before your opponent's serve(which we heard some experts say last night on ESPN) and you cannot use two medical timeouts consecutively(I didn't know you could until last night!).

Again, who knows if Sloane would have kept up her momentum anyways, but you cannot tell me that Azarenka's "injury" timeout didn't change the circumstances of the match.