Ump Show: There's a Tennis Umpire Named Greg Allensworth Who Has Terrorized The Sport Recently With Horrible Call After Horrible Call

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With the way the sport has grown with technology and replay, tennis umpiring seems like a fairly easy gig to have these days. Most tournaments now support automatic line calling with no human error involved. There's honestly nothing to argue about these days besides court misconduct with something like racquet smashing or elongated bathroom breaks. Compared to other sports, you're basically baby sitting here. Well, umpire Greg Allensworth has found himself at the forefront of three atrocious mis-handlings of justice in the last month. Three judgement calls, all gone the wrong way because of his backwards decision making. 

Late last night, at the tail end of a tight three set match, Felix Auger-Aliassime was robbed on a point that ended the match when it clearly shouldn't have. Jack Draper very clearly shanks his ball into the ground. The point should have immediately been awarded to Felix and kept the match going. Allensworth of course thought nothing nefarious happened and ruled it to Jack, ending the match. 

Maybe not clear in real time to the fan watching on TV, but if you're a head chair umpire you can't miss this. Also Draper 100% knew what happened, but played it off like he was looking at Felix the whole time. No shot. It's not on him to say to replay the point though, that's for the umpire to decide. Allensworth blew this bad. Felix is soft spoken and as nice as there is, so for him to argue a call like that you know it was wrong. 

Unfortunately that aspect of tennis is not reviewable for some bizarre reason so his ruling was final. You can tell where the ball landed within a .0003 millimeter margin for error. We've got the ability to measure all sorts of statistics on swing and ball speed on a moment's notice. But we can't use replay to determine something as simple as this? 

When we woke up this morning the US Open came out and said that play will now be reviewable on a bunch of their courts, including the three big ones. Common sense prevails. 

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Oh but Allensworth has fumbled more that call recently. A few weeks ago in DC, Denis Shapovalov was DQ'd from his match for what the umpire said was "shouting at a spectator." Shelton was more than likely going to win the match, but there was no reason at all to end it like that. You can default a player for shouting "what the fuck are you talking about?" Shelton himself was pleading with the umpire to not end it there. Just an umpire on a power trip. 

Worth noting when you get defaulted you lose all of your prize money and ranking points from that tournament. Shapo has been working his way back into form lately, and needed those ranking points to try and creep into the main draw for the US Open. Losing all of that would have been brutal. Luckily for Denis those were reinstated after the match once the situation was reviewed by people with a brain. 

And again in Cincy earlier this week Taylor Fritz was robbed of a clear point. The automated lines system malfunctioned mid-rally and failed to call a Nakashima ball out when it missed by about 4 feet. Allensworth inexplicably blamed Fritz for continuing with the point, even though there really is no longer a challenge system. In the heat of play how are you not supposed to trust the system is operating normally? 

That's three brutal judgement calls made by Allensworth in the span of a month that have players just laughing at his incompetence. There's something about his name being Allensworth that seems to add up with his terrible umpiring. Can't let that dude step foot in Queens later this month. Ump show city like you read about.