Taylor Townsend forced to play a doubles match all alone when partner went down with injury

There wasn't anything normal about what went down on Thursday night at the World Team Tennis event, when American Taylor Townsend was forced to play a doubles match all alone when her partner went down with an injury.

What injury? Liezel Huber, the partner of Townsend, left the court after Townsend hit her in the back of the head with a forehand, and while playing doubles alone is nearly impossible, it makes it even tougher when you aren't allowed to return a serve on your partner's side.

Townsend was left standing all alone on her side of the court, forced to make distracting gestures to try and throw her opponents off as they were serving to an empty court (both players eventually served underhand to the open court).

If you're asking why this match went on instead of just giving the win to Martina Hingis and Anastasia Rodionova, you have to understand the format of the World Team Tennis event.

The scoring is cumulative of the five sets you play, so Townsend was forced to get out there and try and win a few points, or even a set (think the goal count for the World Cup before teams advance to the elimination round).

Townsend did actually win a few points, as you can see above, but eventually couldn't do much when she was playing one-on-two against professional tennis players, losing to a standing ovation from the crowd.

It was a crazy situation, and one not many can remember seeing, but it gave us a pretty entertaining highlight from the World Team Tennis event, and something Townsend won't soon forget.