On Thursday, top-ranked Canadian Milos Raonic touched the net on a crucial point during a Montreal match against 2009 U.S. Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro, but instead of calling himself on the accidental, yet illegal, maneuver, Raonic kept quiet, winning the point and eventually the match, but earning contempt throughout the tennis world for his silence.

The point came with Del Potro serving down a set but up a break in the second. Raonic would have won the point to get an equalizing break chance, but his touch of the net should have awarded the point to Del Potro, which would have given the Argentine a game point to go up 5-3 and one game away from evening the match.

This is what happened when Raonic approached the net. He clearly touches it with his left foot, but it goes unnoticed by chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani. (You can see him looking toward Del Potro in the GIF below.)

Because Lahyani didn’t see it, Raonic didn’t feel the need to call the violation on himself, even after Del Potro complained. Raonic went on to win the game and the set, taking the match in straights. The contested net violation was the turning point of the match.

Raonic spoke about it afterward:

“I was fortunate that the line judge didn’t see it. It’s a lucky thing for me in my sense, unlucky for him. Something that can go really both ways. It’s sort of the exact same thing as having no challenges left and you get a bad line call. It’s like a bad luck thing. It was hard to sort of be able to take this point on such a big point.”

There are two schools of thought here:

1. The chair umpire is there for a reason. Do NFL players don’t call holding penalties on themselves? Is LeBron going to tell a ref that, no, that basket shouldn’t count because he took three steps before the dunk. Of course not. It’s Raonic’s job to play the match, not to officiate it. The error is with Lahyani, not Raonic.

2. Sports like tennis and golf are supposed to have some honor behind them, even at the professional level. Players always call their own penalties and lines early in their careers. It’s not like basketball, where you may call fouls on the playground, but still have a ref for third-grade rec league. Junior tennis and golf events aren’t like that. The honor is ingrained from an early age. Raonic should have called it on himself. He isn’t a villain, but he’s not an upstanding tennis citizen either.

Both are true, but the second one is truer. Raonic got away with one and he knows it.

Still, it’s impossible to put yourself in his shoes. Former players, like Lindsay Davenport, said they would have called it on themselves, but they weren’t in that moment, playing in front of a hungry home crowd, on the verge of their first breakthrough at a big tournament. That’s not a defense of Raonic, merely an understanding.

The real loser is Del Potro, who is too gentlemanly to raise an uproar about Raonic’s temporary ignoring of sportsmanship. He complained to Lahyani, but didn’t rant or rave like others would have. His statement after the match was damning, in the “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed” sense.

Very upset after the match I lost. About the end… I think everybody saw what happened. Thanks for your support. — Juan M. del Potro (@delpotrojuan) August 9, 2013

Yes, we all saw it, Milos Raonic included.

Update: Maybe Del Potro was angrier than we thought. He told batennis.com: