This Time, Umpire Meant It

They had a Ripley’s-Believe-It-Or-Not candidate in the Acura Classic tennis tournament Wednesday, when Daniela Hantuchova of Slovakia, the event’s seventh-seeded player, was upset by unseeded Ai Sugiyama of Japan.

Hantuchova was serving in the third set at 5-6, advantage and match point Sugiyama, when chair umpire Denis Overberg, who had warned her earlier for the same infraction, called a point penalty on Hantuchova for slow play.

That meant the end of the match, and a 6-4, 1-6, 7-5 victory for Sugiyama.

Veteran tennis observers said they had never before seen a ruling like that on a match point.

It clearly was one of the more unusual moments on the women’s pro tennis tour.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Hantuchova said. “I was playing well enough to win.”

The rule states that play must begin 20 seconds after the previous point has ended, and Clare Wood, Women’s Tennis Assn. tour supervisor, said that the rules had been followed.

“The chair did act within the rules,” she said. “The rule should be enforced if it is abused.”

Overberg was the umpire in the chair for the 1999 Australian Open match when Venus Williams started losing beads from her hair and was assessed a point penalty because the beads bouncing around on the court were impeding play.

After Williams won her evening match Wednesday, she was told of the Hantuchova incident and said, looking stunned, “My word. You can have good days and bad days, and that’s a bad day. I play some people on the tour who seem like it they take 90 seconds to get the ball into play.”