Go easy on Kyrgios umpire – he is only human
Controversial intervention at the US Open was an attempt to save a player from himself, writes Simon Briggs
His intention was not so much to help Kyrgios as to help the fans, who were drifting away
hould referees and umpires be silent and remote, like the Calvinist conception of God? Or ready to climb down from Mount Olympus and get involved, like all those philandering Greeks?
The question might seem fanciful, but it has a direct relevance to the US Open’s big talking point of the past 48 hours: the intervention of umpire Mohamed Lahyani in a match involving serial provocateur Nick Kyrgios.
Kyrgios sometimes resembles one of the supermodels of the 1980s, in that he only gets out of bed – psychologically speaking – for the Vogue shoot; anything else is beneath him.
In this instance, he was facing unheralded Frenchman Pierrehugues Herbert on Court 17. And when he messed up the end of the first set, he shrugged his shoulders like a sulky teenager and started “tanking” – tennis-speak for making no effort.
As Herbert moved into a 6-4, 3-0 lead, Lahyani climbed down from his chair and started telling Kyrgios to try harder.
We will never know whether the Australian’s subsequent victory was a result of this intervention. Kyrgios himself claimed that “it didn’t help at all.” But Herbert was understandably upset and demanded that “something should be done”.
In the end, the authorities gave Lahyani a slap on the wrist – saying that he “went beyond protocol” – but allowed him to continue in his post. Which felt like the right decision.
Lahyani is a popular character around the game, and his dedication – not to mention his bladder control – was demonstrated when he sat through seven hours of the record-breaking John Isner v Nicolas Mahut marathon at Wimbledon without leaving his chair.
His intention was not so much to help Kyrgios as to help the spectators, who were beginning to boo and to drift away. His mistake was to try too hard – as if to make up for Kyrgios’s lack of effort – and thus sacrifice his impartiality.
We should remember, though, that officials can never be robots. At least, not unless they actually
are robots, like the line-calling devices trialled at last year’s Next Gen ATP Finals.
And while Roger Federer was right to say – when consulted on the issue – that “conversations can change your mindset”, it is also true that anything can change a player’s mindset. A shout from the crowd, a code-violation warning, a seagull feather floating down and interrupting a second serve. Tennis is a game of tiny margins and matches often turn on a single incident.
While sport might aspire to a Platonic ideal of fairness, it never achieves it. Every top rugby referee spends his afternoons telling players not to transgress. To keep the game moving, these officials are constantly intervening to save players from themselves – rather as Lahyani did on Thursday.
From the fans’ perspective, you could argue that he was doing the US Open a favour. Who would want to have missed out on tonight’s marquee showdown between Federer and Kyrgios – a matchup that, in three previous instalments, has never failed to reach a decidingset battle? Kyrgios was clearly the superior player, once he had got over his childish sulk, and Federer v Herbert would hardly have had the same ring.
Yes, on this occasion, Lahyani overstepped the mark. But to create a contest without some possibility of human disruption, you would have to lock a pair of chess boffins in adjoining empty cells.
Competitive sport – like those ancient Greek legends – is less about achieving perfection than it is about people and stories. We should not get too prissy about it.