Cameron Norrie avoided disqualification and apologised after his tossed racket accidentally hit a spectator during an ATP Tour tournament in Auckland on Tuesday.
Britain’s Norrie, who was born in Auckland, was down match point against Argentina’s Facundo Diaz Acosta when he lightly tossed his racket into the air. The racket struck a woman in a court-side box, but she was not injured.
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The chair umpire issued Norrie a warning, and he subsequently lost the match 2-6, 3-6 in the first round of the tournament. Last year, he had reached the final in Auckland.
“I wasn’t meaning to do that but it’s still not ideal to be doing that and I’ve never done something like that,” Norrie said. (The spectator) “was laughing and I just said ‘so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she said ‘yeah, I’m completely OK.’
“That was not a big deal. But as we saw with some other players, you can easily be defaulted if it catches them in the wrong spot or they’re not looking or something.
“I was not meaning to do that and it is completely not me to do something like that. I apologized very quickly and I want to apologise in general. I’m not happy with how I behaved.”
In related incidents, Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the 2020 US Open for accidentally hitting a linesperson with a ball.
At the 2023 French Open, Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were also defaulted from the women’s doubles after a ball hit by Kato struck a ball girl.
Additionally, Australian player Marc Polmans was defaulted from the final round of qualifying at the Shanghai Masters in 2023 for hitting a ball into the face of the chair umpire.
