Cameron Norrie accidentally struck a member of the crowd at the ASB Classic on Tuesday after launching his racket in frustration.
The British tennis star, who spent most of his childhood in Auckland, New Zealand, had a torrid time in the opening match of his home tournament against Facundo Diaz. Having lost the first set, Norrie’s anger boiled over when his miscued shot into the net brought Diaz to match point in the second.
Exasperated, Norrie flung his racket and it sailed straight into the stands behind him. One female spectator reacted quickly to stop it hitting her flush in the face, with Norrie immediately offering a hand of apology before going on to lose the match 6-2 6-3.
Norrie only received a warning from the chair umpire despite similar events landing players with harsh punishments. In May last year, Terence Atmane was fined approximately £20,000 for accidentally striking a French Open spectator with a ball.
At the same tournament the year prior, the women’s doubles pairing of Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were defaulted after Kato struck a ball girl with a tennis ball. And at the US Open in 2020, Novak Djokovic was famously disqualified for hitting a line judge with a ball.
Norrie admitted after his match that he could easily have met the same fate. « 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, » said the 29-year-old.
« [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 apologised very quickly and I want to apologise in general. I’m not happy with how I behaved. »
In other round of 32 matches at the ASB Classic, sixth seed Flavio Cobolli retired from his clash with compatriot Luca Nardi shortly after losing the first set 6-2. Alex Michelsen, Lorenzo Sonego and Mariano Navone were among the other players to come through their respective contests.
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