Lost in Translation? Not on the Tennis Court
Roger Federer is widely regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. But like any other human, he has rough moments and bad days. But like any other human, he has rough moments. In 2020, one of them cost him a few thousand dollars — and revealed an oddly specific job requirement for tennis officials.
Federer — a Swiss national — faced an American, the fantastically named Tennys Sandgren, in the quarterfinals of the 2020 Australian Open. Federer prevailed, but it was a hard-fought match, with Federer surviving a fourth set tiebreak down 2-1. At one point, the moment got the better of him, and Federer started swearing.
That’s a no-no in tennis. The sport is a polite one — players wear crisp outfits, spectators clap at appropriate volumes, and when one player makes a nice play, the other often gives a clap of approval. And swearing — “audible obscenities” — are not allowed. For example, an older version of the International Tennis Federation (ITF)’s code of conduct (pdf here) explicitly notes that “players shall not use an audible obscenity within the precinct of the tournament site” — doing so can lead to fines or even the loss of points in the tournament itself.
Federer, though, wasn’t swearing in English. As ESPN reported, he cursed in “a mix of languages” and didn’t expect anyone to notice. But a lineswoman did, and reported the infraction to the chair umpire. The umpire cited Federer for the code violation, resulting in a $3,000 fine. (He earned more than $800,000 in the tournament, so it’s not a huge hit to his finances.) He seemed surprised to have been caught, half-jokingly telling ESPN “Clearly she speaks mixed. Didn’t know that. Next time I got to check the linespeople,” implying that he should have studied up on what languages they spoke.
But it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Tennis is a global sport — major tournaments draw players from dozens of different countries. And those players don’t speak — or swear — in the same language. So in many cases, tournament organizers account for this. In 2014, for example, the Guardian profiled Bernadette Halton, an umpire at Wimbledon. She explained to the paper that learning curse words in languages other than her own was simply part of the job: “Halton knows a fair few languages, but her lexical field is limited to profanities. ‘We are given a list of all the swear words in different languages — if I hear an expletive in French or Russian, that’s a code breach.’”
Which means that somewhere, in the quiet days before the world’s most prestigious tournaments begin, officials aren’t just reviewing rulebooks and practicing score calls. They’re studying the global language of frustration — the sharp syllables in Russian, the muttered asides in Spanish, the inventive blends that only surface at 4–4 in a fourth-set tiebreak. It’s an oddly specific kind of fluency: not enough to hold a conversation, just enough to recognize when one has gone off the rails. Federer may have been surprised that someone on the baseline understood him. But in modern tennis, there’s a decent chance someone always does.
Bonus fact: In 2020, Wimbledon didn’t happen — the tournament was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the All-England Lawn Club, the organizers of the tourney, made out okay. As USA Today reported, for the 17 years prior, the Club “paid for an insurance policy to guard against losses if Wimbledon should have to be canceled in the event of a worldwide pandemic.” The insurance company paid out $141 million, covering roughly half the revenue that Wimbledon was expected to bring in that year.
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