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Watch: Alejandro Fokina loses match in bizarre fashion; gets knocked out of Wimbledon after he smashes ball out of court

Published on: Jun 30, 2022 4:23 PM IST
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Alejandro Fokina (Twitter)
Alejandro Fokina (Twitter)

Fokina smashed the ball out of the court in frustration after missing a forehand, and to his surprise, that turned out to be his final bit of action in the 2022 Wimbledon Championships.

It was a rather unusual way of being knocked out for Alejandro Fokina during his Wimbledon second-round match against Jiri Vesely on Wednesday. It had been a marathon match between the two on Court 17, with Vesely leading 9-7 in the tie-breaker of the final set. While the Czech Vesely had won the first set 6-3, Fokina made a strong comeback to win the next two 7-5, 7-6. Vesely stayed alive with another 6-3 win in the fourth before the final set went to a tie-breaker.

Fokina made an unforced error during the tie-breaker that gave Vesely a 9-7 lead, leading to an angry outburst from the Spanish tennis star which eventually led to his ouster from the Wimbledon Championships.

Also read: Watch: Tennis star forgets racquet ahead of second-round match at Wimbledon

Following the error, Fokina angrily hit a ball out of the court before preparing to serve to save a double-match point. The chair umpire termed the offense ‘ball abuse’, and imposed a point penalty on Fokina, that eventually handed the win to Vesely.

Watch the incident:

Tennis great John McEnroe wasn't very pleased with the decision, however.

“I don’t agree with it. That’s crazy… what a lousy way to end it,” McEnroe told ESPN following the game.

Davidovich Fokina had been cited for a different code violation earlier. When umpire Ramos made the match-ending call, Davidovich Fokina questioned the ruling, saying his two citations were for different infractions.

But that doesn’t matter: Two such violations during one match result in a point being awarded to the opponent. This one happened to come right after Davidovich Fokina missed a forehand to give Vesely a 9-7 edge in the first-to-10-points, win-by-two final-set tiebreaker.

Vesely now moves on to face 30th-seeded Tommy Paul of the United States in the third round.

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