There’s nothing quite like a story about one of the most dynamic topics in the sporting world: the bathroom break. The phrase we have all come to know over the course of our lives, “You gotta go when you gotta go,” doesn’t always apply in sports. If Drew Brees had to go with two minutes remaining in a playoff game, could he go? I suppose he could, but he’d be uncomfortable for the remainder of the game. Fortunately for Rafael Nadal, he was granted permission to go during his match at ATP World Tour Finals on Sunday.
As Busted Racquet shared with us, Nadal needed to use the restroom when he was leading 2-0 in the third set against Mardy Fish. Chair umpire Mohamad Lahyani allowed the break, which appeared to upset Fish and got the television announcers talking about how “ridiculous” it was. Nadal supposedly explained himself to Fish when he returned, and then went on to lose three straight games before winning the match in a third-set tiebreaker.
Come to find out, Nadal claims he had a stomach bug and was throwing up in the locker room the whole time he was in there. If that’s the case he obviously had no choice, but as Busted Racquet’s Chris Chase points out this situation sets a strange precedent. What’s to stop someone from pretending they’re extremely ill and taking a bathroom break in order to break the momentum of their opponent?
Maybe the chair umpires need to start issuing Jack McKeon-style bathroom passes to players only when they feel it is warranted. Otherwise it’s going to get to the point where a set is about to begin and we have players missing like our friend Angel Pagan.
