After Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were disqualified from the French Open, fans compared their incident with one of Roger Federer’s past incidents.
The Frech Open keeps being embroiled in further controversy. Earlier, Novak Djokovic sparked outrage when he wrote Kosovo was part of Serbia. The French Open authorities were bashed for not punishing the player.
And now another incident has earned them further outrage from the fans as it has been compared to a past incident. Japanese tennis star Miyu Kato and Indonesian Aldila Sutjiadi were disqualified earning much backlash to the French Open.
Japanese double disqualified for accidentally hitting ball girl
On Sunday, Kato and Sutjiadi faced Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes Tormo. They were playing in the third round of the women’s double format. The game was 7-6 (1), 1-3 when the aforementioned incident happened.
This happened when Kato unintentionally struck the ball girl with a ball. It happened out of play and the girl was hit in the chest. She was seen crying after she was hit and even got an apology from Kato herself.
The chair umpire initially brushed off the incident as a warning to the Japanese player. But the opposition players Bouzkova and Sorribes argued that a harsher decision needs to be taken. So, the chair umpire decided to disqualify both Kato and Sutjiadi from the French Open women’s doubles competition.
Bouzkova and Sorribes were given a win by default and allowed to go to the next round. Meanwhile, Kato and Sutjiadi were punished as part of the disqualification. They were stripped of their ranking points and the prize money they won at the 2023 French Open women’s doubles competition. The prize money was said to be close to 43000 euros.
Tennis Fans compares French Open incident with Roger Federer
This decision to disqualify them for such a trivial incident led to massive outrage among tennis fans. They said the decision was unfair and stupid since Kato didn’t even hit the ball with much force and even went to apologize to the girl.
Some acute fans have also brought up comparisons with Roger Federer. The Swiss tennis legend also hit a ball boy once but he was not disqualified during that incident.
Prominent tennis reporter Ben Rothenberg also spoke about Federer. He pointed out that Federer often used to hit the ball at high speed to the ball boys. He used to do it nonchalantly and as a fun exercise for the ball boys.
Regardless of if this was the right call or not, and
I don't think it was, players can afford to be more careful with this stuff, anyhow.Roger Federer, notably, often played with fire by zipping balls at ball boys in Australia to test their cricket catches.
Mixed results. pic.twitter.com/qqiKpfpf3z
— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) June 4, 2023
In particular, an incident from 2014 came to attention. It was when Federer faced Novak Djokovic in the semis of the Monte Carlo Open. There Federer hit the ball boy who was not even aware the ball was coming to him. The ball hit his head but no punishment was given to Federer, not even a warning. In fact, everyone simply laughed the incident off.
Fed is a bad example. He could have strangled a ball kid and wouldn’t have been penalized. Lmao https://t.co/BWRmyQTZO4
— Andrew Atkinson (@atkinsonfasho) June 4, 2023
One fan on Twitter wrote, “This says it all; They did not disqualify him because the ballboy did not cry nor was the opponent opportunistic.”
Another wrote, “Fed is a bad example. He could have strangled a ball kid and wouldn’t have been penalized. Lmao”
Whatever the case, it now remains to be seen what the French Open authorities do to address the situation.
