Game, Set, Cramps

NEW YORK—It all started with so much promise. There was unseeded Peng Shuai, so compact and smoothly muscled that she looks far smaller than her officially listed height of 5’10”, bouncing around the court like a red rubber Super Ball. She was trading stinging groundstrokes with former No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki in today’s first U.S. Open semifinal in Arthur Ashe Stadium, and giving as good as she got.

Twice in the first set, Peng broke Wozniacki’s serve under the glaring sun, and twice the resurgent No. 10 seed broke right back. The humidity was brutal, the heat inescapable, and the feeling of suffocation was enhanced by the roughly 20,000 bodies who formed concentric rings rising higher and higher into a hazy New York sky the color of stainless steel.

It was brutal, and Wozniacki felt a special urgency to win the tiebreaker that would decide that first set. “Mentally it's hard,” Wozniacki would say later. “It's 30-degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) out there. The heat rule is in. It's hot and humid. You lose the first set, and that's pretty devastating in your head. You have to play another two sets out there if you want to win.”

Impelled by that urgency, Wozniacki played a terrific tiebreaker, allowing Peng just one point. Up to this match in the tournament, Peng had held serve a remarkable 40 consecutive times. Yet Wozniacki had broken her twice in that first set, and scored a handful of mini-breaks in the tiebreaker as well.

“For me to get that first set under my belt was really great,” Wozniacki said. “ I felt good, and I was like, Okay, this is my match to take now.”

As it turned out, Wozniacki didn’t really have to take it; Peng was obliged to surrender it when she completely broke down during the eighth game of the second set, with Wozniacki serving at 4-3. The cramps were already coming on and creating a distraction as she reached break point in that game—then she collapsed on the stadium floor.

It looked like Peng was cramping, which she confirmed during her press conference many hours after the conclusion of this match. "When we finish first set already maybe one hour or 50 minutes and the heat is really hot," said Peng. "I just try to fight, and my body is getting more and more hot and it start cramping.

"It's like your body a little bit out the energy. You just keep going try and fight. I think it's with the cramping, yes.”

Under normal circumstances, she would not have been allowed to seek medical attention until a changeover, because cramping falls under the definition not of injury or illness but “loss of form.” But the “heat rule” was in effect, and under it a player who needs medical attention can receive an on-the-spot evaluation (of undetermined length, it seems) and then, if advisable, a three-minute treatment as per a standard medical timeout.

Tournament doctor Dina Casiero determined that Peng was suffering from “heat illness,” and she was helped off the court and into the bowels of the stadium for an evaluation and treatment that would last a grand total of 10 minutes and 38 seconds.

Near the end of that period, Peng indicated to U.S. Open officials that she wanted to continue, and the medical personnel allowed her to go on—against their wishes:

But all that left Wozniacki, at the far end of the court, wondering what was happening and practicing her serve. “Honestly, I was just trying to focus on myself,” she would say. “I knew that it looked really bad out there, but I thought maybe she was still going to be okay to play afterwards. And obviously when she was —when she came back she still played. She made a winner down the line.”

This was a difficult situation for Wozniacki, and she handled it with grace and tact. “You know, tennis is great—but health is more important,” she said. “To see her struggling out there, I just wanted to make sure she was okay.” At any rate, she only had to deal with the situation for two more points, for once again Peng’s legs gave out. She sank to the court for a second time, this time visibly sobbing.

As tournament personnel rushed out anew and Peng lay writhing on the ground, Wozniacki walked around the net to see if she could comfort or help her opponent. The committee around Peng tried to discern what else might be wrong, and after brief consultations, chair umpire Louise Engzell climbed back into her chair and declared that Peng was unable to go on—“Game, set, match, Wozniacki.”

This entire episode raises some interesting and thorny questions. Tournament director David Brewer met with the press afterward to explain in detail why Engzell didn’t follow the standard protocol for cramping, which would be to launch the point penalty system. The situation was muddled by the fact that, for some reason, Engzell couldn’t communicate from the chair with Peng upon her original collapse, and had to climb down and go to her—an acceptable action under the circumstances, as well as under the heat rule.

There’s no question that the tournament tried to do the right thing for all concerned. But what exactly is “heat illness?” It appears there’s no such thing; most resources refer to a range of heat-related disorders, among which cramps is almost always the first mention. Furthermore, you have to wonder how bad heat illness can be if a player can be permitted to go back out and play just 10 minutes after falling victim to it.

The real-world meaning of the heat rule is that, when it’s in effect, there’s really no such thing as cramping, or the associated problems (like light-headedness and dehydration). Breakdowns associated with those conditions fall under the “heat illness” heading. That’s OK, but it leaves a lot of wiggle room. Besides, it’s madness to allow a player diagnosed with “heat illness” to go back out almost immediately to continue playing—especially if the condition really is considered different from and worse than plain old cramps and associated symptoms.

"It was horribly badly bungled, it’s a serious black eye for our sport," John McEnroe said on CBS. I’m not sure I agree with that, but it sure wasn’t pretty watching Peng writhing around on the floor of Arthur Ashe, and it certainly wasn’t fair to Wozniacki to allow so long and distracting an interruption.