By Mark Peifer, USA Pickleball Certified Referee; Past Chairman, USA Pickleball Rules Committee
QUESTION: In a match, can the server’s partner announce the score, even when the server may not appear to have a speech or physical impediment in calling the score?
ANSWER: Yes is the short answer. You’re asking about Rule 4.D.1, no doubt. When we wrote that rule we wanted to provide a rule basis for a player’s partner to call the score if the server was, for some reason, “unable.” We purposely didn’t provide a written list of reasons for why that might be the case. “Unable” has wide latitude. Once the server delegates their score calling responsibility to their partner, that person calls all scores for their team, no matter who is serving for their team. The intent of that is to prevent a case where the opponents don’t know who is calling the score.
By the way, it doesn’t even need to be their partner. It can be their opponent. It must stay that way for the remainder of the game. Unless, of course, that score caller suffers a similar fate. If both partners cannot call the score, then the most obvious solution is to have one of the opponents do so.
You’ll notice I didn’t directly answer your question. Rule 4.D.1 doesn’t define impediment or what would be included in being “unable,” as the rule states. We did that to avoid potential conflicts between opponents regarding what conditions had to be met for the Rule to be enacted.
