Ten-time Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic was just a few centimeters and the fractionally slower reaction time of a child away from the outcome of a Grand Slam event. For the second time in his career. On Saturday at the Australian Open, history’s winningest male tennis player almost hit a ball kid with a ball he hit in frustration in his third-round match against Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp.
Take a look:
You can clearly see the ball boy jumping out of the way to avoid being hit. Had he been slower or not paying attention, Djokovic would have defaulted at the Australian Open. Tournament officials, while understandably wanting to protect one of the game’s superstars, would likely have had no discretionary power. The rules are clear: if you hit a ball out of anger or frustration and it hits someone, you must forfeit the match.
Dear readers, I cannot emphasize enough how outrageous this almost was. First and foremost, Djokovic has already made that mistake, which likely cost him the 2020 US Open title. He was involved in a difficult fourth round match against Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta when he irritably hit a ball and it hit a border woman in the throat.
Did he hit her on purpose? He didn’t. Did that change his guilt? No, that absolutely did not happen. The US Open made the difficult decision to default the prohibitive favorite for the title. He was furious and his fanbase insulted the poor frontier woman, claiming she was overreacting. Turns out she was the canary in the coal mine. This time he was just lucky, because the child in question was alert.
To be clear, I don’t believe he would ever intentionally hurt a tournament volunteer (ball kids at the Australian Open don’t get paid). Does that absolve him of responsibility for his lack of self-control? Not even a little.
Even at first glance this is a bad look. At the very least, the child could have been injured. Dig a little deeper and his irresponsible and juvenile behavior is astounding – as is his apology, if you can call it that.
“I’m sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused.”
REAL? Is that what you regret?
Here. Let me fix it. “I regret that by behaving like a recalcitrant child, I not only disregarded the safety of the tournament representatives assigned to my match, but that I almost let down my fans, my team and event organizers.”
Normally I’m not so critical, but he has to do better. There’s just no diplomatic way to say it.
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