A couple of years ago, Hannah Deacon took a call from a football agent.

Deacon, who had no background in football, was surprised. What she did have, however, was a deep knowledge of cannabidiol (CBD), a legalised chemical extracted from cannabis — and this is what the agent wanted to talk to her about. Some of his clients were interested in starting a company selling CBD, which promises to help users overcome stress and anxiety, and he wanted her advice.

Deacon was appalled. It was her impression that the group were trying to make a quick buck out of something they did not understand. She refused to get involved.

“They weren’t passionate about it,” Deacon tells The Athletic. “These are patients’ lives we’re talking about…”

The incident was instructive, both about the controversy attached to discussions around CBD and how football, and footballers, have become one of its biggest marketplaces.

In the UK, former footballers have been at the forefront of marketing CBD, particularly on social media. Former Premier League players such as Matthew Le Tissier, John Hartson, Paul Merson, John Aldridge and Dean Windass all say it has helped transform their lives; from a more recent vintage, the ex-England and Liverpool goalkeeper Chris Kirkland is also a strong advocate. Former England international David Beckham, meanwhile, had a minority stake in the cannabinoid product firm Cel AI before selling in February.

In many ways, football is an obvious marketplace for CBD. Former professionals habitually complain of managing pain to some degree because of old injuries, while many have spoken about the mental challenges that come when they no longer have the adrenaline rush of matches that have defined their lives for so long.

Anthony Fowler, the former boxer and cousin of ex-Liverpool and England striker Robbie Fowler, runs Supreme CBD, a company which lists Le Tissier, Merson, Kirkland and Windass as ambassadors. He says former footballers are also dealing with the cold reality that they no longer have their clubs around to solve their aches and pains.

“Footballers get anxiety, like anyone else — arguably more because of the public pressure they’re facing,” he tells The Athletic.

Although Fowler thinks CBD could also help active players with injury prevention, pointing to evidence that it can ease inflammation, active footballers have been less willing to openly talk about any experiences they may have had with CBD — despite the fact it was taken off the banned substance list by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), as well as United Kingdom Anti-Doping (UKAD), in 2018.

According to one football agent, who would like to remain anonymous to protect the identity of his clients, the fact that cannabis remains prohibited explains why current players are reluctant to admit trying it. Although it seems unlikely CBD will get banned again, if it did, that player’s reputation could be damaged by association. “There isn’t enough distance yet since coming off the banned list,” says the agent.

CBD is not a new product. It is an active ingredient in cannabis and derived either from the hemp plant or created artificially in a laboratory. As opposed to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), another part of the cannabis plant, it does not create a ‘high’ and is also non-addictive.

CBD’s medicinal use, largely to treat minor pain or ease anxiety, can be traced to Central Asia, where a study in the journal Science Advances recently suggested it formed part of burial rituals as early as 750 BC.

Hemp grows in Lincolnshire, England, destined for use in CBD oil (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

More recently, CBD has become a commercialised product, sold on the open market usually in the form of gummies — small sweets that can be chewed — capsules or oil infused with CBD, which can be applied to the tongue. Vapes, creams and even bath bombs containing CBD are also available.

Its users can be evangelical about what they believe it has done for them. Aldridge, the former Liverpool and Republic of Ireland striker, insists he is sleeping better than ever since using CBD but a significant amount of his social media timeline involves responses to accusations that he is only promoting the product due to alleged financial incentives coming his way. Aldridge is an ambassador for Supreme CBD.

In September, Aldridge described himself on X as a “man of integrity” insisting he wouldn’t advise others if it didn’t work. “Thousands of people” were now using it according to Aldridge, who claimed they were getting “brilliant results”.

Aldridge told The Athletic that he had encouraged family and friends to try CBD oil, which has done “wonders” for his life. He says he has struggled for years with carpal tunnel syndrome (a condition that creates numbness in the wrist) as well as back inflammation, but since using CBD he has had fewer problems.

“A lot of people are cynical about it, possibly because of its connection with cannabis,” Aldridge says. “It’s done me no harm whatsoever. I wake up in a much better mood. It agrees with me.”

John Aldridge uses and promotes CBD (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

There are, indeed, many sceptics. A study led by the University of Bath this year found there was “no evidence” that CBD reduced chronic pain, describing it as a “waste of money and potentially harmful to health”.

Sixteen people were involved in this research and the Bath researchers concluded CBD was “no better than a placebo at relieving pain”.

Deacon suggests this is where the conversation about CBD gets confused. She says that while there is anecdotal evidence from some users that CBD can help with mild pain depending on the dosage, chronic pain is a different matter, a problem that is more likely to be managed by controlled use of THC.

According to Deacon, the findings relating to CBD would be different if an assessment was instead made about how it affects stress and anxiety. “Good CBD can have a positive impact on the lives of some people,” she insists.

Deacon’s experience with cannabis is deeply personal. It began when her son, Alfie, suffered from an epileptic seizure at eight months old. Over the next six years, as she became his full-time carer and tried to save his life, they moved from the south of England to the Netherlands, where Alfie started using prescriptive cannabis in an attempt to bring his condition under control. He now plays a fully active role in school and has not had a fit for more than four years.

Having campaigned in the UK to increase awareness about the potential benefits of cannabis, she has since worked with doctors and pharmacies.

“Like any industry, there are responsible companies and less responsible companies,” Deacon explains. “When it comes to the production of CBD, some of the less responsible ones are accused of not paying attention to signposting exactly what is in a product that includes too much THC. So I can understand why current footballers would be reluctant to use it generally.”

Deacon says she does not work with any CBD companies. She stresses the conversation around the compound in football remains controversial because of concerns about its potential risks, quality control and labelling accuracy.

What is undeniable is that CBD is now big business. In 2019, an article in the New York Times suggested that in the United States alone, the CBD industry was projected to be worth $16billion (£12bn) by 2025.

There have since been distribution challenges due to state laws but in 2021, a report commissioned by the Association for the Cannabinoid Industry found the UK’s CBD market had more than doubled in just two years and was now valued at £690m. By 2022, the UK stood as the second-largest consumer cannabinoid market in the world, behind the U.S.

The trigger for CBD going mainstream came in 2018, when the United States passed the Farm Bill under federal law, removing hemp (cannabis with no more than 0.3 per cent of THC) from a list of controlled substances.

Two years later, the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded that CBD should not be considered a narcotic drug and in 2022, CBD was classified as a ‘novel food’ by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA). This created new opportunities for entrepreneurs willing to speculate in an emerging market.

One of them was Anthony Fowler, who won middleweight gold at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. He launched Supreme CBD, which has recently relocated to a bigger site in Liverpool due to its product’s popularity.

Antony Fowler gave up boxing to focus on his CBD business (Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)

Fowler tells The Athletic that in 2018, while he was still boxing, another CBD company approached him about sponsorship but he was nervous because rule changes had only recently come into place. Reassured, he used it for the first time after suffering from jaw pain following a sparring session in the ring. “It was faster than morphine,” he says.

Fowler launched Supreme CBD in 2020 and says he gave up on boxing because of the scale of interest, with 120,000 potential customers now on the company’s database. Jade Jones, Britain’s Olympic champion taekwondo fighter, is another sportsperson listed as a client on its website.

Fowler claims Supreme CBD’s popularity comes down to pricing, the fact that it has the strongest strain of CBD, imported from Las Vegas, and that his product “has no side-effects. It just makes people feel better”.

He is adamant that he has not targeted the football market, even though former footballers are among his product’s most vocal advocates.

Their promotion has caused its own controversy. In February, Supreme CBD was found to have breached UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rules by not making clear that Le Tissier and Hartson were being rewarded for their posts and for making banned medical claims.

Le Tissier, who acknowledged to the ASA that he receives commission on CBD products sold with his personalised online code, and Hartson, who said Supreme CBD paid him a small amount for the use of his social media platforms but that he was no longer working with the company, said they would clearly label any future posts as marketing material, as did Fowler.

Kirkland, an ambassador for Supreme CBD, insists he had taken his time before drawing any conclusions about what their products could do for him, before using social media to highlight what he had found.

In 2022, Kirkland, who retired in 2016, said in an interview with London newspaper The Times that he was over the worst of an addiction to painkillers that almost destroyed his life, leading to him contemplating suicide.

He explained to The Athletic that he is open to paid promotional work for CBD products, but only if they have affected him positively. He says they have helped treat anxiety. “I’d only ever recommend something that has improved the quality of my life,” he says. “I’ve recommended CBD to friends and family and they’ve had similar experiences to me. It’s something I know works.”

Like Aldridge, he insists, “I have never slept so well in my life,” though since turning to Supreme CBD two and a half years ago, he has also committed himself to an exercise regimen, including ice therapy. “CBD is just one of the things that has made me feel better,” he adds.

Kirkland says he can go weeks without using CBD but sometimes, he will take four to five gummies a day before applying oil to his tongue at night. He has also suggested on social media that CBD has helped ease some of the back problems that led to his painkiller addiction.

CBD has many advocates but there is still unease around its use, especially among sportspeople.

When invited to comment by The Athletic about why CBD was removed from the banned list in 2018, WADA said that following “consultation with scientific, medical and anti-doping experts, including a review of medical and scientific evidence, it was determined that CBD did not satisfy two of three key criteria”.

This related to questions about whether it could 1) enhance sporting performance, 2) represent an actual or potential health risk to the athlete or 3) violate the spirit of the sport. WADA reviews its list of banned substances annually and can add to that list at any time, in exceptional circumstances.

In the UK, at least, CBD’s cause has arguably not been helped by some of its higher-profile advocates backing other, more controversial causes. Le Tissier, one of the earliest champions of CBD’s benefits, has been largely ostracised from football after amplifying a wide range of conspiracy theories online, including denying the war in Ukraine. Fowler, meanwhile, has been a vocal critic of the Covid-19 vaccination programme.

One psychologist with a background in medical science, who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity in the interests of client confidentiality, believes CBD tends to be attractive to people who are already inclined to be anti-establishment and, therefore, wary of the big pharmaceutical companies.

Refills for electronic cigarettes containing CBD in France (Philippe Huguen/AFP via Getty Images)

“The danger is people start putting faith in that instead of traditional research-based evidence, which isn’t sexy and doesn’t sell,” they said. “You’ve got chronic pain? The option is to go on a 16-day management course. Alternatively, you can take these ‘magic drops’ that are new to the market that the authorities don’t really want you to know about.”

Separately, there are concerns over regulation — or a lack of it. “There are a lot of people out there doing the market harm,” Dom Day, a former rugby union player who set up a CBD company, FourFive, with fellow ex-pro George Kruis, told Forbes in 2020. “There’s a lot of press about companies that have way too high THC levels and too low CBD levels.”

There are broader worries about what happens until the industry reaches a point where there is more control. The psychologist contacted by The Athletic describes this period as being like “the Wild West”, referencing examples of CBD companies that are known for putting very low amounts of CBD, or possibly even none, in the product.

“What you don’t want is people putting their faith into something that doesn’t work at the expense of something that really does,” the psychologist added. “You combine that with a lack of regulation, and there’s a problem.”

In 2023, the FSA in the UK attempted to get a grip on the industry by cutting the recommended daily intake of CBD for adults to 10mg. Yet Fowler is confident that regulation will not harm the growth of his business. He believes that greater education on the benefits of CBD will encourage more people to try it.

If that happens, maybe an active footballer will be among them — and should one emerge as an advocate, perhaps we will discover that interest in CBD has not yet peaked.

(Top photos: Getty; Chloe Knott — Danehouse, iStock; design: Dan Goldfarb)

Whatever you’re going through, you can call the Samaritans any time, from any phone, on 116 123 (UK) or 1-800-273-TALK (USA).

FRANK provides a confidential service in the UK to anyone wanting information, advice or support about any aspect of drugs. You can call free in the UK, from any phone, on 0300 123 6600.

The WNBA is expanding the regular season and moving to a seven-game series format for the Finals in 2025, in a move that will capitalize on the numerous records set this year due in large part to Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark.

WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced the news Thursday before Game 1 of the WNBA Finals between the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty. 

“The finals mark the culmination of what I think is the most transformational year in the WNBA’s history,” Engelbert said. 

“You saw all the statistics we put out – viewership, attendance, merch sales, digital engagement – at or near record levels. And to put it in perspective with a few stats that bring insight into what has happened, the WNBA significantly outpaced the industry in average consumption of live games in 2024.”

She continued, “The league’s growth and increased demand for WNBA basketball make this the ideal time to expand the schedule, lengthen the finals, and provide fans more opportunities to see the best players in the world compete at the highest level.” 

Caitlin Clark, left, poses with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert after she is selected with the number one overall pick to the Indiana Fever in the 2024 WNBA Draft at Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York, on April 15, 2024. (Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports)

The league currently has a best-of-five semifinals and finals in its playoffs with a best-of-three first round. The new format will move to a best-of-seven finals. Engelbert also announced that the regular season will expand to 44 games.

CAITLIN CLARK’S FINAL GAME OF ROOKIE CAMPAIGN MARKS ANOTHER WNBA MILESTONE

The expansion follows the undeniable impact that WNBA Rookie of the Year Caitlin Clark has had on the league. 

The league said more than 2.3 million fans attended games this season, the most in 22 years, and the teams combined for 154 sellouts — up from 45 last season. The Fever’s average attendance of just under 17,000 led the WNBA, and 10 of their games have set league TV viewership records — many in front of sellout crowds. 

Indiana also closed out the regular season with another record, playing in front of a crowd of 20,711 fans – the largest attendance in WNBA history.  

The WNBA also saw a record 22 regular-season telecasts averaging at least 1 million viewers. According to a report by the Sports Business Journal, Clark played in 19 of those games. 

Caitlin Clark, #22 of the Indiana Fever, celebrates during the game against the Los Angeles Sparks on May 24, 2024 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. (Adam Pantozzi/NBAE via Getty Images)

The league has also expanded to include 15 teams, with the latest being awarded to Portland. 

The WNBA also recently announced a landmark media rights deal with the Walt Disney Company, Amazon Prime Video and NBCUniversal set to run through 2036 and a multi-year partnership with Delta Air Lines, which became the official airline partner of the WNBA. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter. 

In less than 24 hours, three tennis players subjected three umpires to three tirades of different flavors in Shanghai.

Tuesday night in that Chinese city, world No. 17 and U.S. Open semifinalist Frances Tiafoe told umpire Jimmy Pinoargote that he “f***ed the match up’ after the umpire called a time violation against him at 5-5 in a deciding tiebreak. Tiafoe had walked to the baseline as the shot clock, which adjudicates time between points, went to zero, and then tossed the ball into the air with no intention of hitting it.

Tiafoe lost his first serve for the violation, his third of the match, and then lost the next two points and the match against Roman Safiullin.

Then on Wednesday, Fergus Murphy called a time violation against world No. 12 Stefanos Tsitsipas, also a two-time Grand Slam finalist. At the change of ends, Tsitsipas laid into Murphy, saying, “You have never played tennis in your life.” Murphy replied, “I’m not as good as you, but I have.”

“No cardio,” Tsitsipas, who eventually lost to Daniil Medvedev, then said. “You probably play every time serve-and-volley.”

The Tsitsipas/Murphy drama from earlier today: pic.twitter.com/qxMobL5Zpd

— José Morgado (@josemorgado) October 9, 2024

In between those two incidents, world No. 3 and two-time Grand Slam finalist Alexander Zverev on Tuesday night told Mohamed Lahyani that umpires are collectively “f***ing up the tournament” after Lahyani correctly adjudged that Zverev had failed to hit the ball before it bounced twice in his eventual win over Tallon Griekspoor.

“Every Grand Slam final I lose because of you guys,” Zverev said. He was beaten by David Goffin the following day, in a match in which he twice escaped a code violation for ball abuse.

The vast majority of tennis matches pass without even minor incident, but this cluster of incidents — two of them centered on a new shot clock rule that has caused consternation across the sport — preceded the news that Wimbledon will abolish line judges in favor of electronic line calling (ELC) from 2025.

The Athletic’s tennis team discuss the themes at the heart of these decisions, and ask how the sport can solve a problem like officiating.

James Hansen: On the face of it, the two decisions that prompted the Tiafoe and Zverev outbursts couldn’t be more different. Whether or not a ball has bounced twice is a matter of objective fact; what does or doesn’t constitute a service motion is more up for debate. Tiafoe’s tossing of the ball, even with his hitting arm by his side and not at all taking part in a service motion, was designed to buy him discretion from Pinoargote that he did not get.

Is tennis’ scoring system being built on objective facts — whether a ball is in or out, and whether it has bounced twice — part of the reason why players and umpires struggle to see eye to eye when things are more ambiguous, even if they’re pretty clear-cut?

Matt Futterman: I take issue with the idea of the sport mostly being about objective calls. Yes, the Zverev call was a fundamental rule. But like all sports, each tennis match also has a heartbeat and a temperature, which can’t always be taken by hard and fast officiating diktat. There are moments when the pros could learn something from the weekend hacker game down at the park, where indecision over a call is often resolved by a simple, “play a let”.

Alexander Zverev a Mohamed Lahyani: “Cada final de Grand Slam que juego la pierdo por culpa de ustedes” 🙄 pic.twitter.com/5LqFuqgDIf

— Tiempo De Tenis (@Tiempodetenis1) October 8, 2024

Earlier this summer at the Cincinnati Open, when Jack Draper won match point against Felix Auger-Aliassime on at the very least an incredibly debatable non-double bounce call, Draper said he would have replayed the point if a video replay were available. Why make it conditional? After all, who wants to win like that? Down at the park, we would play a do-over. Sometimes a pro does that, and they get huge applause and good karma. Most of the time, with so much on the line, they don’t. I get that, but only sort of.

With Tiafoe, the new system that the ATP started trialing after this year’s French Open automatically starts the shot clock three seconds after the last point. It’s meant to speed up play and take the job of resetting the clock out of the hands of the umpires. I think it’s a terrible development. Tennis is more taxing than ever. Why are we penalizing players for pushing themselves over the edge to win a long rally, or the kinds of points that thrill fans?

Tennis wants to prevent umpires from favoring certain players who might be more deliberate and bounce the ball too many times. I get that. But at that point in a deciding set, I don’t want an umpire to have anything to do with the outcome of a point before the ball is even in play. I want players to decide the outcome of matches, except if someone does something egregious. Was Tiafoe’s fake serve egregious? A bit. But he was trying to work around a flawed rule.

Charlie Eccleshare: Matt makes a great point about the power of the let and having the humility to accept sometimes that, as an umpire, you just don’t know. Tennis has so benefited from Hawk-Eye technology, compared to, say, football’s relationship with VAR (Video Assistant Referee) since its widespread introduction five years ago, because the calls it adjudicates are objective.

Subjective calls are more tricky for officials too, because they have to straddle the very delicate balance between that taking the temperature of a match and enforcing what they are expected to enforce. Sometimes in the search for clear-cut answers, they don’t really exist.

On Matt’s point about umpires influencing outcomes, Pierluigi Collina, probably football’s best ever referee, said one of the biggest myths around officiating is that a good referee is one you don’t notice. Nonsense, he said. If there are a number of big decisions to be made, you make them!

Was the Tiafoe call a big one to make? No. The umpire could easily have let that one lie and no one would have been talking about it. But it was his third time violation and the nature of it clearly piqued the umpire, who said outright to Tiafoe, “I’m not buying it.” The bigger issue, like you suggest James, is that I get that tennis wants to quicken matches up, and I’m all for possible solutions to a sport whose match times have gotten out of control, but this feels like chipping away at the edges when far more drastic steps are needed.

Zverev’s reaction after a correct decision was nonsensical, but these outbursts over the last few days remind us that these players are all physically and mentally exhausted. Solving those issues requires much bigger reforms than marginally reducing match times by shortening the gaps between points, and those issues cause greater damage to the sport as a product than people taking too long on serve once in a while.

Alexander Zverev could not believe Lahyani’s correct decision. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)

Matt: I like Charlie’s point about Collina. I also think in a lot of cases the calls that officials don’t make are as important, and maybe more so, as the ones they do. My guess is Collina would group all of them as “decisions” but we all know there are tennis officials who are more inclined to insert themselves into the action. And at the risk of making a broad generalization, I can’t think of one female official I would put in that category.

James: It seems like the shot clock is intrinsically flawed. The old version is too susceptible to being governed by subjectivity; the new version makes no concession to the contours of a match. It also doesn’t seem like the benefits outweigh the number of players complaining, or the difficult situations it’s creating for umpires.

Charlie: Umpires are constantly put in difficult situations, and we ask a huge amount of them. In the Tiafoe incident, the umpire risks getting a slap on the wrist from his bosses for not enforcing the shot clock, and maybe even accusations of favoritism towards the more famous player of the two. Or he will receive criticism for being too heavy-handed and not having a feel for the situation. We expect umpires to almost act as psychologists sometimes, understanding why a player is behaving in a certain way and expecting that to then inform their judgments.

James: Discipline — or a lack of it — is a big problem here. Players would not feel emboldened to swear at, insult, or in the case of Zverev in Acapulco in 2022, physically attack where umpires are sitting if the ATP Tour imposed stronger correctives. The German wasn’t even banned for that incident, and there is no question that the latitude given in these situations is making the problem worse. Players may feel like they are suffering more, because they lose a point or a match, and therefore money and ranking points, on what they perceive to be a bad call, but the lack of respect for umpires’ authority seems more pervasive than isolated extreme cases.

Charlie: Another issue is that in some cases, like with Draper, and then with Zverev, the officials and the players are the only people who cannot see the clearest view of the incident that they are disagreeing on. Everyone in the crowd, or watching at home, can just look at replays on their phone or TV. That’s clearly not right. Use of things like video review (VR) and electronic line calling (ELC) is still so fragmented that there are too many built-in disparities that umpires and players are expected to navigate.

Matt: On this, tennis is stupid. There are seven different governing bodies, all of which have rights to set up events as they please. And within the two tours, the ATP and the WTA, not all the tournaments have to comply with a singular technological system.

Why? Money. Tournaments large and small would be on the hook to pay for the cameras and computer technology to allow for video review and electronic line calling on all the courts.

Then there are the traditionalists. The French Open, for instance, likes the idea of umpires climbing down and inspecting ball marks on the clay. At this year’s tournament, a particularly egregious missed call derailed Zheng Qinwen, who had no grounds to challenge it. In 2023, Amarissa Toth erased a contested ball mark in a match against Zhang Shuai, who then retired because of the misfortune and pressure of a situation that players should not find themselves in.

For a while, the rationale for this was that the computer system was less foolproof because of the raised tape lines on a clay court. This problem has been fixed. Wimbledon also insisted on line judges and the Hawk-Eye challenge system until this week, even though cameras can check all the calls and often show missed calls that go unchallenged. Everyone has the proper information — except those who need it most.

Charlie: I’m told by well-placed sources that the ATP Tour is exploring the possibility of using VR technology at its higher category events from 2025, taking in the Masters 1000 and some 500-level events. It will be in place at the ATP Finals in Turin next month and the Next Gen Finals in Jeddah in December. Generally with technology, once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back in, and so you’d expect VR technology will only become more widespread in the next few years.

In its one significant use at this year’s U.S. Open, between Anna Kalinskaya and Beatriz Haddad Maia, umpire Miriam Bley appeared to reach the wrong conclusion despite replays, so these systems are not yet perfect — but the option was there. As Matt said earlier, why make that option conditional?

Wimbledon’s decision to make the change with line judges after 147 years is significant, as it reflects the growing acceptance that there is just no compelling argument against the use of ELC. “Because we’ve always done it like this” is not a compelling argument for players, umpires, or fans.

Video review did not help Miriam Bley reach the correct decision at the U.S. Open. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

To expand on something else Matt said about Hawk-Eye showing missed calls that players didn’t challenge, the fact that, without ELC, players are asked to essentially officiate the accuracy of their own shots has always been absurd to me. They have enough to worry about without also having to concern themselves with making calls and challenging officiating mistakes.

At the recent Olympics, Coco Gauff said that she always had to advocate for herself after an umpire went against her. And even with ELC in place in Cincinnati (also in August), when the system missed a call on a ball hit by Brandon Nakashima that was out, umpire Greg Allensworth told Taylor Fritz that he had to be the one to stop the point for it to be corrected. Fritz understandably went off on the idea that he had to adjudicate the match as well as play in it.

Matt: The players suffer plenty from the bad calls but line judges and umpires are the ones who look like idiots through little fault of their own. They are the ones who need the information more than anyone, and they are just about the only ones who don’t have it. Tennis leaders need to do right by them, instead of leaving them at the mercy of the fallibility of their own eyes as balls travel at 80mph (128kmh) and up. Players are not blameless either, and not only because they curse out umpires on occasion, which should be heavily penalized to reduce the frequency with which it happens.

James: And in those situations, the chair umpire becomes the face of the system and all its problems, and then has to receive all the umbrage that the player feels even if they — or the ELC system — came to the correct conclusion. Tennis officials should think about how the rules and technologies can be best applied to avoid these kinds of situations, but the split leadership makes that harder than perhaps it needs to be.

Charlie: Fundamentally, tennis needs to think: how can the rules best serve the game and create the best spectacle? And, how can the systems that enforce them be designed and implemented to ensure that players and umpires aren’t having to deal with additional stress in what is already a really stressful sport? At the moment, systems like the new shot clock and the fragmented protocols don’t seem to be serving that purpose as well as they could.

(Top photo: Andy Wong / Associated Press)