A scoring error from umpire Carlos Bernardes helped to give Flavio Cobolli a critical break of serve in his three-set victory over Stan Wawrinka in the second round of the Shanghai Masters 1000.
At 0-1 in the third set, with three-time Grand Slam champion and current world No. 236 Wawrinka serving, he won the first point of the game when Cobolli missed a backhand return wide. Bernardes correctly called the score over the tannoy as 15-0, before speaking into his Walkie-Talkie to request some electrolytes for Cobolli, who is currently ranked No. 30.
Play resumed, and Cobolli won the next point with a soft drop shot that Wawrinka could only guide into the net. Bernardes called the score again, but said it was 0-30, when it was actually 15-15. Wawrinka then won one point to go 15-30, before Cobolli won the next two to go 15-40 and then break serve for a 2-0 lead.
Quite a bizarre situation earlier in the Wawrinka-Cobolli 3rd set.
Bernardes (probably distracted asking for something) called the score wrong in the 2nd game (0-30 instead of 15-15). Nobody noticed the error. Not even the players.
Ended up being the only break of the match. pic.twitter.com/Hjg2l6mLnM
— José Morgado (@josemorgado) October 7, 2024
Instead, the score should have been 30-40, with Wawrinka facing a break point. It was the first and only break of serve in a match whose previous two sets had gone to tiebreaks, and Cobolli triumphed 6-7(6), 7-6(4), 6-3.
Bernardes, Wawrinka, Cobolli, and both players’ entourages completely missed the incident, with no protest from Wawrinka. The Athletic has contacted the tournament organizers for a statement.
When a similar incident befell Venus Williams at Wimbledon in 2004, then-tournament referee Alan Mills told the BBC that because there was no query from Williams at the time, nothing could be done.
In a second-set tiebreak, Williams’s opponent, Karolina Sprem, missed a first serve. Williams returned the ball in anticipation of the serve having landed in, and Sprem hit the ball back past Williams before she returned to hit her second serve. But the chair umpire, Ted Watts, awarded Sprem a point as the 19-year-old Croatian walked back, putting her up 3-1 when the score should have stayed at 2-1. Neither Williams nor Sprem contested the situation, and Williams lost the tiebreak and the match in a major upset.
According to the ATP rulebook, a scoring error is one of the situations which can be checked by Video Review, which is not yet widely operational across the ATP Tour and is used in concert with electronic line calling (ELC).
It is not present at the Shanghai Masters, where line judges call balls in or out, and each player has three challenges per set with which they can review a call via Hawk-Eye technology.
Bernardes earlier this year announced that 2024 will be his final season on the tour. He became a full-time umpire on the ATP Tour in 1992.
(Top photo: Tennis TV)
