A break point, a player about to serve, a light switched on in the stands. The umpire stopped Jessica Pegula’s serve, and the point was cancelled.
Maxime, the intern, spent the day on this.
Silly question, but: how many lumens does it take to stop a serve? I asked around and I got « it depends », « the umpire decides » and « it’s like the let ». Three answers, zero numbers. And the point was cancelled, so somebody decided that a light counted as a playing incident. I checked, and actually nobody can tell me which one.
Maxime finds it perfectly sensible to stop everything for a lamp, since it clearly happened, but he’d like the text. Not the vibe, not the custom, the text. He has learned that in tennis the two are often the same thing, and he is not over it yet.
Pegula answered the question herself in an US Open press conference, and without condemning everyone. “I think I can appreciate influencers coming and showing a bit of the US Open experience,” she said, listing the food, the drinks, the activities and the shops, part of the fan experience that might make people want to come. Then: “But it gets complicated when they’re filming videos or taking photos and using lights for selfies. There are people trying to compete and it’s their job. It seems a bit disrespectful…”
Since then, Wimbledon has decided not to accredit influencers, from 2027, according to RTBF. The same report notes another effect: more room for tennis fans, who sometimes struggle to get tickets that certain influencers receive straight through the post.
So somewhere there is a letterbox that gets Wimbledon tickets delivered to it. I refreshed a booking page for two hours last year. I’m told that’s also the tradition. Fine, but still: how does the envelope know?
Which settles the lamp question without answering Maxime’s. Starting in 2027 the light won’t be there, so the rule about the light will never need to exist, and that, he has been assured, is how the sport usually solves things.
Anyway, he still has a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: RTBF Sport.
