My latest night shift began significantly earlier than I was expecting it to, as both of the first two matches on my Court 8 finished in 6-1 6-3 scorelines. So instead of starting around 3:30 as tentatively scheduled, it wasn't yet 2:30 - it almost felt too soon! I was well prepared, of course, but I didn't really feel like I was in top form for that first match between Wang Qiang and Jasmine Paolini. Wang was in pretty good form and Paolini was getting down on herself, and with Wang leading 6-3 5-2 about 80 minutes into the match she had a match point on Paolini's serve that she didn't take, and then serving at 5-3 she had another match point. But Paolini saved that one as well, broke back, and won the final five games of the set to force a decider. I'm glad I'd reserved *some* of my material for a potential final set, but it was somewhat painful to realize as Paolini eased ahead and completed the 3-6 7-5 -64 upset that I could have been done an hour earlier. Luckily, Karolina Muchova put in a much more consistent performance in my second match - as did I in my commentary - and crushed Caty McNally 6-1 6-1 in just over an hour. So I was done around 6:30, which was certainly earlier than I'd expected.
As I was lying in bed, tossing and turning and trying to get to sleep, I checked my phone and discovered that tonight's order of play had already been published...and the match on Court 6 I was supposed to be commentating on didn't exist. Or rather, it was now a doubles match instead of a singles match, and we don't commentate on WTA doubles matches. So I pored over the OOP and our commentary schedule to see if it had been moved, and I realized there was now an extra match on the second show court (the 1573 Arena) - Johanna Konta vs. Bernarda Pera - in the same time slot as my match on Court 6 was supposed to be. So I decided to send an email or two and lobby to get assigned that match, thinking I might even earn some extra money relative to what I'd expected on the basis that it might be classified as "World Feed" instead of an "Additional Court" match. (I get paid more for World Feed matches than for Additional Court matches, even though I do the same job and the same amount of work for each.) But when I woke up - after only about four hours' sleep - I learned that instead a) the match was still classified as "Additional", and b) a commentator who lives in Leeds that hadn't been scheduled to work tonight was given the job instead of me. It's not that big a deal, and I really don't mind having the night off, but I'm certainly peeved to have been passed over like this...and particularly for this commentator in question, who confessed to me when we did our first tennis commentary testing together - we started our WTA work at the same time - that he didn't really know much about tennis, and in that practice session we worked together he certainly sounded like that was the case! I've used the opportunity to email my producer and ask if there's anything I can and should be doing differently or if it's just a technical thing - which I'm pretty sure it isn't - so hopefully I'll get a constructive response in that regard.