	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

US OPEN

August 23, 2019

New York, NY, USA

USTA PRESS CONFERENCE

CHRIS WIDMAIER: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. I'm Chris Widmaier, managing director of communications for the USTA.

Our goal here today is information, and obviously we will open it up to questions, as well. We are well aware our media day begins at 11:00 a.m., an hour from now, in Louis Armstrong Stadium, starting with Roger Federer.

We do want to kind of put forth some of the changes and thinking that has occurred over the course of the year prior to the US Open before we open it up to questions.

We will be hearing from Stacey Allaster, our chief executive of professional tennis. Stacey will provide a broad overview of where we have been over the course of the year. Soeren Friemel, our new tournament referee, will go into some of the specifics on rules just as a primer just to set the table differences between qualifying, things of that nature.

We have our chief umpire, Jake Garner. He's going to talk about some of the broader education communication components of our thinking this year.

We also have our tournament director, David Brewer, in the room. David is here in the capacity, if anybody is following officiating, tied together on heat mitigation or the heat policy, things of that nature as it relates to the tournament.

Without further adieu, I will turn it over to Stacey Allaster to begin. When they are done, we will go to Q&A.

STACEY ALLASTER: Thank you, Chris. Welcome, everyone, to the 2019 US Open. As Chris said, I will just set the stage.

As we reflect upon any event, we certainly conduct a thorough review of all areas of the tournament to look at how we can improve the experience and the event for our fans, for our players, for our partners, and all of the staff who are working the event.

In the officiating area, there is sort of four themes in the areas of improvements that the team will go into a deeper dive for you.

The first one is an expanded team. Sitting with me, of course, under David's leadership as our tournament director, the full team will be working closely with David and has been working through last ball 2018 to first ball 2019.

To my left, our new tournament referee, Soeren Friemel, he's not new to the US Open. He's not new to tennis. He has been a partner with the USTA and US Open for many years. He served as our chief umpire for the past couple of years. He has done a terrific job helping to mentor our American officials for which we are grateful. I know he will continue to play that leadership role now in the new role as tournament referee.

Down on the end, no stranger to all of us, Jake Garner, one of the greatest American chair umpires. We convinced him to retire from the court and join us year round, to join us, to run professional tennis for the USTA under Sean Cary's leadership. He is our chief umpire.

A couple of new positions. These people are not new to us but have expanded roles with the USTA and the officiating area. We have Melanie Tabb, WTA supervisor. She's been a Grand Slam supervisor, but she is in an official capacity as an assistant to Soeren. And also joining Melanie is Keith Crossland, also been with us doing scheduling for many years, but he's taken an expanded role and helping to work with all of the Grand Slam supervisors.

And I don't see Stefan Francis (phonetic) here, but we round out the officiating team with Grand Slam supervisors that also come in, and that is led by Stefan Francis.

The second theme is how can we communicate, how can we educate our fans better on the rules of tennis? And there are four areas of communication that we looked at. The first one is in stadium. The second one is on air, on broadcast, where, if requested, we will make the tournament referee available to broadcast.

And Soeren will provide factual and rule clarifications of what perhaps has gone on within a match. Again, all in this theme of helping fans understand the rules of the 2019 US Open that are governed by the Grand Slam rule book.

Here today, all of you play a key piece of this puzzle to help us communicate with our fans. So we will have this annual briefing where we will meet with you and share the enhancements each year. Postmatch media availability will also be available to media. You'll work with Chris. He's going to work with all of you to determine how we do that, but again, I think we want to be accessible and provide clarifications, and for you also to help us and our fans understand the differences between a Grand Slam rule book and the others and the situation.

And lastly, we know the world is social. There is a lot of engagement with fans there. We have enhanced monitoring so that we can, you know, follow what thread is happening, and we are going to test the waters. For the semifinals and the finals only, we will have an official on Twitter communicating throughout the match and explaining the rules.

The third theme is the consistency of implementing the rules. We all know tennis has four rule books: ATP, WTA, ITF, and a Grand Slam rule book.

The US Open is governed by a Grand Slam rule book just like the other three slams. With that, so many of our officials week in and week out are either working with the ATP, WTA, Davis Cup, or Fed Cup, and then they come here for three weeks and they work under this rule book. The first thing we did is we got all of the officiating leaders together for two-and-a-half days at our national campus in Lake Nona, and together we all built this plan.

We have had that ongoing, consistent communication with all of the leaders of officiating to help us build upon the themes that we are sharing with you today.

Through the US Open Series throughout the year, Soeren and Jake have been in regular contact with supervisors, referees, to also be discussing what may or may not have been happening at the events leading up to the US Open.

Lastly, we will have an expanded chair umpire onboarding process with those working the 2019 US Open.

Finally, and Jake will speak in more detail, we will have an enhanced video for assessment and training.

So that's sort of the four major themes. I'll let my men's doubles partners take it and give you the specifics of many of those enhancements and changes leading into the 2019 US Open. Soeren?

SOEREN FRIEMEL: Thank you very much, and also welcome to this officiating primer. From an officiating point of view, I think the main objective is always to explain the rules and enforce them.

As Stacey mentioned, we have different tours and there are different procedures in place. Sometimes little differences make a big difference when you watch the matches and then you say why is the chair umpire doing it this way and just last week in Cincinnati or another tournament they saw it that way?

So today, my idea is I'm going to share the most important rules we are going to enforce here at the 2019 US Open. I'm going to go through some details and also hopefully then be available in case of additional questions based maybe on situations you have seen in the last couple of weeks.

I think it's very important we do this on an annual basis, because I think it's really important just as a start, the start of a tournament, to show, okay, this is how we do it. These are the changes. This is what you're going to see on court.

We start with the one-five-one with the warmup clock which is not new and which is now enforced also at the WTA and ATP events. One minute for the player to come to the prematch meeting, as soon as the second player dropped the bag on the bench. So what pretty much happens, the players are coming on court, chair umpire observes the second player dropping the bag, starts 60 seconds, and then 60 seconds for the player to come to the prematch meeting.

Right after the prematch meeting, there is a five-minute warmup which has not changed. And then as soon as the warmup has finished, there is another 60 seconds for the players to start the point. He doesn't have to serve at that time, but what we anticipate or what we ask chair umpires to observe is that players are in the baseline area.

They should have picked up the ball, which is slightly different, by the way, to the ATP and the WTA, so we are asking them to be ready at the baseline while on the tours they can just leave the bench area.

I think one important point to make is that you might hear start-of-match violation, which means that a player has been late, is not serving the first point after the 60 seconds, which then means the player will get a start-of-match violation, but that does not impact the match. It's not like a code violation for audible obscenity or racquet abuse which then adds up during the match. It is something which will be dealt with after the match. But, you know, I think it's important to understand there might be a fine. We are still not enforcing that in a very strong manner, but a player might be fined in case a player is late.

Serve clock. There is always a discussion, is it serve clock or is it shot clock? Doesn't matter. Here we call it serve clock. But in the end, it's the same. On all tours, it's 25 seconds between the points, and the 25 seconds start as soon as the chair umpire makes the announcement. So 25 seconds when the chair umpire makes the announcement, there is still a bit of discretion, and I think, let's say, a couple of weeks ago there was some players discussing with the chair umpire about when to start the 25 seconds, and the way we are asking chair umpires to enforce this is to take into consideration the length of the point and in addition the crowd, which means when you have a great rally, many shots, we are okay or we expect the chair umpire to wait a couple of seconds before announcing the score and to immediately manually start the serve clock.

There might be a situation that there is an ace, not much crowd support, not much clapping, and the chair umpire will immediately announce the score and start the serve clock. So there is a bit of discretion, which obviously makes a difference in starting which will then add up. You have the 25 seconds plus a couple of seconds at the beginning.

You might also hear that the chair umpire will announce a score while the crowd is still clapping, because it was an ace, it was a shot point, and the chair umpire wants to start the serve clock.

Before we had the serve clock, before we had the procedure in place, we pretty much asked chair umpires to wait until the crowd is quiet to then announce the score. With scoreboards all around, I don't think it's necessary anymore to share this. So you will see these differences and the 25 seconds then will run down on the screens, and as soon as the chair umpire presses the start-of-point button, which will be pretty much as soon as the player starts a service motion, the serve clock, the time will disappear.

What does it mean to start the point? Bouncing is not starting the point. So you might see a time violation while the player is still bouncing the ball. So that's a discretion of the chair umpire. And in the end, we are expecting like starting the service motion and then the serve clock will be taken off.

The chair umpire has the authority also to pause or to take off the time from the screen. That might happen in case something is happening on court, there is a bottle rolling onto the court, something with the ball kids, something with the crowd. You can pause or take it off. Discretion of the chair umpire. And in case the player is late, player will be penalized with a time violation, and I'm going to come back to that a little bit later.

We have the extreme heat policy in place, which means for singles match, for all the singles matches, in case the temperature, the WBGT, which is the WetBulb Globe Temperature, which takes into consideration heat, humidity, some additional factors, reaches a certain temperature, there will be a heat rule in place. The heat rule will be in place for singles matches, for women's matches after the second set and for the men's matches after the third set.

We are monitoring every 30 minutes, and this heat rule policy will not only be in place for matches which are called, so when the players are walking on court, and we are also going to put it into effect for matches in progress. So in case that happens, the chair umpire will talk to the players and say, Heat rule is in, so after the second set on women's singles or third set on a men's match, there will a 10-minute break.

What is a player allowed to do in those 10 minutes? Leave the court, we have cooling areas around the site, so can just go in there, sit there for as long as the player would like, not longer than 10 minutes, can take a shower, can eat, can -- you know, all these things are possible. What is not allowed is coaching. So a player cannot leave the court and then be coached. There is no difference between quallies or main draw, even though we have off-court coaching in qualifying.

The question is always like how does the player actually know how much time is left? So what's happening is that the line umpire escorting the player has a stopwatch. The chair umpire starts the stopwatch, as soon as the player say, Yeah, I'm taking the heat rule, a 10-minute break, stopwatches will be given to the line umpires and the player can always ask how much time is left.

And then it's the responsibility of the player to be back on time. If not back on time, again, there will be a time violation, and it's the responsibility of the player and play has to continue after 10 minutes.

Bathroom break. There has been a rule change for 2019. Before, for the women's matches we had two bathroom breaks or change-of-attire breaks for best-of-three-set match, and this is now reduced to one. For all best-of-three-set matches there is one bathroom break, change-of-attire break, and for the men's, best-of-five-set, two.

So if players leave the court, bathroom break should be taken at the end of the set. They can go to the nearest bathroom, and they have reasonable time to do so.

Sure, everyone asks a question, What is reasonable? Sometimes we see players for change-of-attire break leaving for 10 minutes. And that is a very difficult question to answer, because if you look at Ashe Stadium court, where the bathrooms are just outside, so it takes 10 seconds for the player to leave the court and to go into that area, it's a different situation on Court 17 where the player has to walk a little bit further, or Court 8 or another area.

So reasonable is very difficult for me to answer. What we don't want is the players are moving in a certain area and they first sit down to relax and not try to, let's say, re-energize. We want players to move into that area, to change as quick as possible, and then come back.

We allow players to change obviously their shirts on court, that's for both women and men, but we are requesting that in regards of shorts or skirts that they leave the court. But we also are okay if they just go outside in a private area just to change and come back, because obviously heat is a factor. We need to take into consideration that sometimes clothes are wet and then it's the chair umpire dealing with that situation.

ELC, electronic line calling, I think that's a quick one. This has not changed. We have it on all courts. I think is a great help officiating for players and chair umpires. There is no change. Still three unsuccessful challenges and in case of a tiebreak there will be one more.

I just want to continue with the qualifying of court coaching, so during the qualifying, we have off-court coaching rule in place, which, and I'm just going to give you a basic overview, the coaches have to be in a specific area which is marked. So their entourage can sit there. And if the player is on the side of the coach, there can be communication between the points, "come on," "forehand," "move," whatever it is, if the player is on that side. If the player is on the opposite side, can do hand signals but you cannot shout over to the other side.

Q. When did this begin? When did they start allowing this on-court coaching?
SOEREN FRIEMEL: This is the third year, actually. There have been tries at some Grand Slams.

Signals on the opposite side, communication on the same side. We allow players standing up and then going to the fence to talk with the coach. Set break, as well. But anything happening outside of the court, players going for bathroom break, anything, then there is no coaching allowed.

For the main draw, the rule has not changed, so coaching is not allowed, and we are also asking chair umpires to enforce that rule.

Last, but not least from my side, just quickly, talking about the violations, because as always, a bit of discussion about what's the difference between code violation and time violation, what happens in this situation and that situation.

So starting with time violation, player is slow, serve clock, player gets a time violation. Doesn't matter if the player is the server or receiver, it will be a time violation warning. And then, if something happens for the server, there will be a loss of serve if the server is slow, and for the receiver, if the receiver is slow, there will be a point penalty of a point. And that's going to continue.

So if there is another violation, again, the server will be a loss of serve and for the receiver it will be a point penalty.

This is different to the code violation part where we have audible obscenities, unsportsmanlike conduct, verbal abuse. I think we have all seen a couple of racquet abuses all around, so that is code violation where the first step is a warning, second is a point penalty, game penalty, and then the next step is discretion of the tournament referee if any violation is going to be penalized with a game penalty or if the player should be defaulted. That depends on the violation.

And how this is all displayed will be explained by Jake.

JAKE GARNER: As was mentioned, we are looking for ways to increase the fan awareness of what's going on in stadium. So one thing is we are implementing the timing tiles to show more information. So that includes changeover time, set break time, and medical timeout time as well as heat break time. You will see those on the timing tiles on all the courts.

As well as when there is, before each match, in the stadium courts, we are putting rules as part of the rotation of information that's on the screen. So, for example, we will have the one-five-one rule scrolling on the screens to just better educate the fans in stadium.

As well as when a violation is given, it will appear on the scoreboards on each court. So again, just to make the fans more aware of what's going on.

How this looks on each court is slightly different based on the scoreboard, but it will be available on all courts.

CHRIS WIDMAIER: I know we are getting close to when people need to move on to the 11:00. We do want to leave some time for questions. One of the things we just cut out of this is this use of video technology which we can get anybody up to speed on post this, but we want to get to questions. Anybody?

Q. The on-court coaching or on-side coaching during qualifying, what is the objective of it? I understand it's not a pro circuit event, so what is the objective of it at the majors?
STACEY ALLASTER: The objective of coaching is about providing another element of content and engagement for our fans. If we look at the history of the WTA, their coaches are mic'd up, and that was for providing access for the fans at home or watching on air, to have that, you know, strategic insight and that dialogue.

Here, in 2017, we implemented an off-court coaching. It has the same dimension. We are not going as far. ESPN will cover some of those dialogues. They have been this week. But ultimately, all of these innovations are about the fans. It's all about making our sport relevant in the North American territory, and we all know in the U.S. market, engagement of fans, wanted to be closer, more access. We are seeing athletes mic'd up during competition. Access to coaches is readily available in other leagues. And at the end of the day, the USTA wants to grow this game.

Q. So it's not about helping the players develop?
STACEY ALLASTER: That was never the genesis of it, no.

Q. I think I read somewhere that Carlos Ramos wouldn't be officiating any of Serena's matches? Although I know it's not the first time that players and umpires have been given holidays or whatever to each other, is it a good look for the sport for that sort of individual, those individual issues to be put into the scheduling?
SOEREN FRIEMEL: Well, I mean, we have a slate of the best officials here for the 2019 US Open, and there is some flexibility. And as you mentioned, it's not the first time that we made decisions that where it's good for the tournament, good for the players, good for the umpires, as well, to not be on those matches.

In the end, our goal is to assign the best chair umpire for the right match. So in taking all those factors into consideration, the decision was made that he would not do any of the Williams sisters' matches.

Q. Just to follow up, would you expect Carlos Ramos to be considered for all other high-profile matches, or would you be looking to protect him somewhat, keep him away from the big matches?
SOEREN FRIEMEL: Carlos has worked all the other Grand Slams. He has done Davis Cup, Fed Cup, he's going to the Davis Cup finals. He's considered still for all high-profile matches.

Q. Can I clarify? On this more communication from the umpires' and officials' side, say what's happened in the women's final 12 months ago, something similar happened again, Carlos Ramos has never been allowed to put his side of the story, despite taking fierce criticism, including from senior figures at the USTA, in the same circumstances, would there be someone, the umpire themselves or an official who would be able to speak up and explain the decision from that side of things?
CHRIS WIDMAIER: Yes, 100%. We will have a protocol in place that I'll have written up. I do want to get input from -- I have reached out to many members of the media to get input and talk to the various leagues, at least here in the United States, NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball, on how they handle post-game accessibility to referees, et cetera.

Our thinking right now is if we get to a critical mass of asks -- I don't want every match to say, Hey, I need Soeren, whoever, but if there is a situation such as what we saw at least two, three times last year, a number of members of the media come to myself or to Brendan McIntyre, who all of you know, our goal and our thinking is we will work with ITWA to have a pool reporter join Soeren Friemel and/or Jake Garner, ask the questions provided and get it out there. So, yes, we will make access.

Q. Is that to the umpire specifically?
CHRIS WIDMAIER: No, if we need the umpire's opinion -- "umpire," in quotes -- it will be our chief umpire, Jake Garner, and in almost all circumstances will also be the tournament referee.

Our goal is to try to, you know, get this policy into place. I think it will be kind of a living policy, to be honest with you, because we want -- our goal, as Stacey said up front, is to increase communication, decrease confusion.

So yes. That was a very long yes. (Laughter.)

Q. Is it clear that for Serena and for Venus they're not doing it with Ramos?
CHRIS WIDMAIER: Yes, that's exactly right.

Q. Is that the two of them asking for it?
STACEY ALLASTER: No, no, the request has not come in. This is our collective decision. We want to focus on the competition.

Q. Did you explain it to them, though?
STACEY ALLASTER: I talked to their teams at all times.

Q. You mentioned that a code violation will be put on the scoreboard. Is there a marker that stays on through the match if that player is playing under one violation or two or is it a brief flash and goes away?
JAKE GARNER: It's not a constant marker there. It's just when the violation occurs it will show up on the board at the moment it's given. It's not a constant marker.

STACEY ALLASTER: It's kind of like to support the audio. So it's nothing new, but there is an audio, code violation, racquet abuse. Then it would just go up on the board, as well, so we have that reinforcement for all fans to see it. And then it will just come down.

Q. Players sometimes are confused by the clock shot and the timing of it. Are you taking measures to inform them of exactly what you expect from them to avoid that confusion?
SOEREN FRIEMEL: That's a difficult one also for the umpires. That's the reason we have the -- the chair umpires meeting used to be on Monday morning just before the start of the matches, 20 minutes, to go through the different rules and regulations.

But that's just not enough. So we made the decision we need to have the meeting before, and we're going to show videos to get all the chair umpires on the same page.

The good thing for the players is that as soon as they hear the announcement, they know the 25 seconds start, and if we get to a stage that all chair umpires will implement or will enforce all in the same way, then I think we are in a really good stage. Hopefully we are going to be able to do so.

But still, in addition to just the regular announcing of the score, the chair umpires still have the option also to talk to the player and say, You need to be careful. You're getting a bit slow between points.

Q. Just clarify the change-of-time ruling. If a woman has already used up her bathroom break, wants to change her top, are you saying you would expect them to be able to leave the court to do that? If so, if it's an outside court, how much time would you give them to do that?
SOEREN FRIEMEL: So if a player has already used a bathroom break after the first set, and after the second set wants to change her shirt, she can do it on court. If she doesn't want to do it on court, it might be a situation that, or Court 17 where there is a tunnel just around, she will just go outside and come back and we will be flexible with the time there, okay?

CHRIS WIDMAIER: We are getting closer. We will stay here as long as you want, but with the 11:00...

Q. Wildcards, Stacey, can you just explain the rationale -- this happened just after Wimbledon, I think, when sort of a lot of journalists were away or whatever, but the decision to give the wildcard to Coco Gauff, was there much discussion about that? Can you explain? Appears to be a contradiction in the WTA rules. What was the rationale?
JAKE GARNER: That's a great question. Obviously we're aware of and supportive of the age eligibility rule that the WTA has. We understand that works beautifully in a week-on, week-out situation through the course of the year of the tour.

At the same time, our wildcard committee takes into account performance through the course of the year, and the opportunity for a player to come on a big stage perhaps a little bit sooner than normally, the WTA would allow.

Our wildcard committee is comfortable that Coco can handle it, and that's why she was awarded the wildcard.

CHRIS WIDMAIER: Thank you very much, and as I said, look forward to maybe talking to some of you about this postmatch process to solidify and try to get as much input from y'all.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297