Ball sticks to sweaty palm

Beauford P Asked 10 years ago

I know that once you start the serving process, you can't grab the ball again and restart your serve. You must complete the whole serve or it's your opponents point.

But this happened to me the other day while practicing serves with my coach (I didn't think to ask my coach at the time because we both knew what happened and we both laughed it off and it wasn't during a point. I also thought it would be a good question to ask here). What if your palm holding the ball is sweaty and the ball gets stuck to your palm and it doesn't release from your palm like it usually does, and gets stuck in your palm on the way down, but then gets released about 1/2 way through that down motion and goes in a completely different direction so that you can't complete the serve?

Are you allowed to wipe your hand and start the serve again or is this just bad luck, point over? Keeping in mind it's obvious to all parties what had just happened and why.

Alois Rosario Answered 10 years ago

Hi Beauford,

Once you start the serve the ball is in play.  So in this situation you would lose a point.  Try to make sure that you wipe your hand often if it is hot to make sure this doesn’t happen to you in a real match.