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A story from the U.S. Open:

It’s the first round of the tournament, and I’m watching Reilly Opelka, a 6’11’’ American with a massive serve. (The fastest I saw him serve: 141 mph.) On one point, he serves just a little wide, and there’s that familiar call from the umpire: “Out!” He hits his second serve (something merely around 105 mph), and a rally ensues. Another ball goes just beyond the baseline. Again, that familiar call: “Out!”

Except that this time, I’m looking around, and can’t figure out where the voice is coming from.

There’s the umpire in their chair, but they’re not in position to make a call like that. There are the ballboys, but they don’t make calls like this. (Some are teenagers! The winner of this match will make $115,000 — there’s no way the U.S. Open would let them make these calls, right?)

It happens again a few minutes later, a male voice yelling “Out!” just after the ball misses the line. But again, I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.

Naturally, I turn to Google, and there’s the answer:

NEW YORK, Sept 3 (Reuters) – Ash Barty, the No. 1 seed at the U.S. Open, watched on match point as her opponent’s backhand sailed long on Thursday, prompting the familiar sound of a linesman yelling, “Out!”

There was no line judge, however. The call was a recording, triggered after an advanced system of cameras known as “Hawk-Eye Live” tracked the ball until it landed out of bounds.

For the first time, the tennis major has installed electronic line-calling on every court, replacing human judges who were responsible for determining whether, say, a serve traveling at 140 mph touched a line the width of a ruler.

At first, it feels a little strange. Tennis has always had these moments of confrontation between the players and umpires. (Go to YouTube and search, “You cannot be serious.”) So to lose that felt initially like losing a little part of the game.

But the more I watched — and I saw matches on Tuesday, and then again Friday — the more I came to appreciate the robot umpires. Some of these balls were hit so hard, and so precisely, that it felt impossible for any human to actually know whether they landed in or out. On Friday, I sat just a few rows up from the baseline,, and couldn’t tell if several shots were in and out — they were simply too close to call.

Things change, and that’s OK. So often, we get used to the manual way of doing things — taking on specific tasks, because it’s the only way to do so, until the moment when we find a way to do things faster and more effectively. It’s hard to embrace change, but I know for me, when I find a way to get faster at my job, I try to take advantage of it. (After all, there are only so many hours in the day, and every hour I waste on manual tasks is one I could be using to help a client.) Sometimes, that means finding a calendar tool the help me speed up the process of booking a meeting. Sometimes, that means using tools like Zapier to automate previously-manual tasks. And in the future, it might mean hiring people to take on work that used to be central to my job.

What are the essential tasks that only we can do, and what are the things that can be automated? At the U.S. Open, I got an answer to that question — and in the end, really liked what I saw.

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I took that photo at the Angie Kerber-Sloane Stephens match at Louis Armstrong Court.

Figuring out how to handle emails while you’re on vacation isn’t easy. I’ve tried a few different strategies over the years — mostly, they haven’t worked.

But this past week, I tried something new: Transparency with a personal touch.

I told people when I’d be back and when they might expect a reply — the usual. But I added a personal flourish, explaining that I was out for a few days to celebrate my anniversary. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have included such a detail, worrying that it might’ve seemed too personal. Do people really care where you are? Don’t they just want their email answered as quickly as possible?

And instead, what I found was that so many people wrote back to my OOO with kind messages, and notes about the urgency (or lack thereof) of their messages. ”Enjoy your time off!” they wrote. “We’ll talk when you’re back.” I still wrote back to many of them, but felt far less pressure to reply while on vacation.

I’m planning on keeping this template: Telling people when I’ll be gone until, how frequently I’ll be checking email, plus a sentence about where I am or what I’m up to while I’m away. (If you’re in a big company, you might want to add a note about who else can help while you’re out of office.) The replies were so friendly, and I’m betting that several clients will ask, “How was the anniversary?” when we chat next.

Friendly, transparent, and a potential conversation starter? I think I’ve found an OOO format to use going forward.

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Above, that’s the full OOO message, plus one reply from a client.

I watched an Olympic sport this morning that I didn’t understand: Freestyle wrestling. The broadcast had suckered me in. They’d done one of those big feature stories on an athlete, Adeline Gray, who wrestles in the 76 kg category, and I was inspired by her story. She’d won five world championships, but at the last Olympics in Rio, she’d been injured and didn’t medal. She fought her way back, and today, had a chance to win gold.

Instead, she came up short — a second-place finish, and a silver medal.

But in the post-match interview, you wouldn’t have known that she was disappointed. She spoke of the challenges she’d faced on the road back. She talked about how excited she was to finally win a medal. She spoke directly to young athletes, and encouraged them to chase their dreams — that they could go back to school for a Master’s degree, or start a family, or win an Olympic medal. That they could have it all, if they wanted.

https://twitter.com/alliseeisgold/status/1422176878178275331

I’m sure Adeline Gray wanted more. I’m sure she’ll be disappointed that she didn’t win gold. But to see her celebrating afterwards, even after a tough defeat, was inspiring.

She’s not the Olympic champion, but she’s an Olympic champion. Congrats, Adeline. Go celebrate. You’ve earned it.

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That’s a photo of Gray showing off her medal to family via video call after the match.

This weekend, one of my dearest friends, Allison, was in town to visit, and we spent a good chunk of the weekend watching the Olympics. She’s a former swimmer herself — she swam at our alma mater, and was fast enough to swim at the Olympic trials in her home country of Canada. (She finished two seconds away from qualifying for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.)

So I was excited to watch some of the swimming with her. What I didn’t realize is that we’d end up watching completely different races.

While I was yelling about the obvious stuff (“They’re so close to the world record line!”), Allison was noticing all the little details. During a backstroke race, a favorite was behind with 50 meters to go. “Did you see that moment of panic?” she asked me. I had not. We rewound and paused, and sure enough, there was a quarter-second where the swimmer glanced right, realized how far behind he was, and kicked it into high gear. It’s the kind of thing that you’d never notice — unless, of course, like Allison, you’d spent thousands of hours in the pool, competing at some of the highest levels of the sport.

Over the course of the morning, she pointed out tiny details over and over again. When one swimmer suddenly lost his lead coming out of the turn, Allison explained that he’d gone too deep out of his flip turn and lost momentum. When one swimmer was disqualified for an illegal touch on the wall, Allison spotted it seconds before the TV crew.

It’s gotten me thinking about all the other things I wouldn’t spot — and have been completely oblivious to all these years! — that a true expert can see right away. Having that depth of knowledge gives you a superpower: The ability to analyze in real time, at speeds that the rest of us can’t. It’s something that I know I strive for in my work: When someone throws a new problem or challenge at me, do I know enough that I could diagnose the problem — and suggest a solution — right then and there?

I’ll never be able to spot the things in swimming that Allison can spot right away. But it’s fun to know that if I ever have a question, I’ve got just the swimming expert a phone call away.

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That’s a screenshot from this year’s 100 meter men’s swimming final. To be honest, I watched that clip three times to get the screenshot, and even now, I can’t recall what they were talking about when that swimmer got circled on screen.