4.N.3. Fault if serve return goes into the net or out of bounds

4.N. Receiver Faults. It is a fault against the receiving team resulting in a point for the server if:

4.N.3. The receiver or their partner plays the ball after the serve bounces on the correct service court and their play results in the ball hitting into the net on their end of the court, without crossing over to the server’s end of the court or if their play results in the ball not being returned successfully into the court on the server’s end, e.g. being hit out of bounds or into a permanent object.

This is a new rule, an addition to section 4.N.

Since in doubles play it is not a fault for an incorrect receiver to play the ball and the action of receiver touching the ball occurs first, it is argued that upon an incorrect receiver touching the ball, the immediate call should always be a replay regardless of whether the receiver’s play on the ball was a successful return or not.  Hence, an incorrect receiver, upon realizing that the correct receiver will not get to a well placed serve, can merely touch the ball to force a replay and negate the serve of the serving team.  It adds “insult to injury” that the incorrect receiver’s play on the ball does not even have to be a successful return as the offending team is “rewarded” with a replay while the team that is complying with the rules has their good play “erased”.

This would apply to all  doubles games where they incorrect receiver is returning a serve, but the well-intended change to replay out of position situations has given rise to a scenario where an offending team is rewarded at the expense of the team that has not violated any serving rule.