Tennis Player Forced to Play Alone in Doubles Match After Teammate Gets Injured

If a player suffers an injury in a tennis doubles match and can't continue, it would make a lot of sense to just award the victory to the team with two players remaining. Unfortunately for Taylor Townsend, the format of the World Team Tennis tournament required her to play one-on-two tennis after her teammate went down.

Townsend's Philadelphia Freedoms teammate, Liezel Huber, had to exit the match after getting hit in the back of the head by one of Townsend's forehands. At that point, the Freedoms held a 1-0 lead.

With Huber out, the Washington Kastles' Martina Hingis and Anastasia Rodionova had a huge advantage.

Here's some information on the format of the World Team Tennis tournament, via CBC Sports:

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A match in the Mylan World Team Tennis league involves five sets -- one set of men's singles, women's singles, mixed doubles, men's doubles and women's doubles. Each set goes up to five instead of the traditional six.

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That meant that Townsend was going to have to do her best to earn points. There are a few problems with that.

Not only did Townsend have to forfeit every time Huber's serve came up, but she was also unable to play in her teammate's vacant area when her opponents served. That led to some easy points.

Given the situation, you can only feel bad for her. There's nothing that she could do to stop her opponents on those serves.

Townsend was able to win some points, however:

Don't forget that she also had to cover the entire court, including the alleys, by herself.

It should come as no surprise that Washington won the set, 5-1.

[SB Nation]