Okay, so, I’ve been watching a lot of tennis lately, and I keep coming across this term “walkover.” At first, I was like, “What the heck does that even mean?” So, I did a little digging and wanted to share my findings with you all.
First off, I started by just watching more matches and paying closer attention when the term came up. I noticed it usually happened before a match was supposed to start. Then, I hit up the internet, just typing “what is a walkover in tennis” into the search bar.
The top results were pretty clear. Basically, a walkover is when a player has to pull out of a match before it even begins.
- I learned that there’s a difference between a walkover and when a player retires during a match.
- Retiring is when they’re already playing but have to stop because, say, they got hurt or they’re just too sick to continue.
- But a walkover is only before the match gets going.
I also found out that it doesn’t count as a real win or loss for either player. It is not like they actually played and someone won fair and square. Instead, the player who didn’t pull out just automatically moves on to the next round. And this can happen because of a bunch of reasons. Maybe the player got injured during practice, or they woke up feeling sick, or sometimes they get penalized for breaking the rules.
So, after reading through a bunch of articles and forum posts, I finally feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on what a walkover is. It’s a bit of a bummer when it happens because you don’t get to see the match, but at least now I know what’s going on.