With a stadium bearing his name at the United States Open, an obvious link binds the jazz legend Louis Armstrong to tennis. But one of Armstrong’s recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” at times encapsulates a subtle feature of matches.
Akin to one of the song’s lines, “You like tomato and I like tomahto,” the names of tennis players intermittently prompt different pronunciations among chair umpires. Broadcasters can vary, too, in how they say a name in a sport that contains 51 nationalities in the top 100 of the rankings.
While such differences in interpreting designation never affect a match as groundstrokes or injuries do, wildly incorrect versions can draw the ire of players and spark outrage on social media.