Another day, another tennis champ in a tit-for-tat stoush with an official.
This time, our player is Andy Murray, who is accused of hitting balls in the umpire’s direction during a drawn-out Monte Carlo Masters match against Rafael Nadal.
Murray’s bickering with umpire Damien Dumosis began in the final set, as he started complaining that Nadal was taking too long between points, and killing his momentum.
Midway through the set, as Murray trailed 4-1, Dumosis finally cracked, and had a go at the Scot for lobbing balls in his direction.
Damien Dumusois vs Andy Murray p 1 pic.twitter.com/ReICdcU9Xy
— Stroppa Del (@stroppadel) April 16, 2016
As Murray approached, the umpire scolded him:
“That’s enough, Andy. You have zero respect for what I do. So that’s fine, you can disagree, but no respect, I cannot accept that. I go there, I check the mark, you hit the ball to me. [It is] the second time you do it, you did it again before in the chair, so that’s enough.”
Murray protested that he’d done nothing wrong, and that he’d merely hit a ball into the net, but the umpire continued: “You know you hit the chair. You know exactly what you did. I’m not stupid, Andy.”
Damien Dumusois vs Andy Murray p 2 pic.twitter.com/xUYaCuwACG
— Stroppa Del (@stroppadel) April 16, 2016
Murray eventually went down to Nadal 2-6 6-4 6-2. In a slightly salty press conference after the match, he invited journalists present to make up their own minds about his performance, saying:
“There were a few things that happened in the match. Obviously towards the end, he [Nadal] got the time violation for taking too long in that last game. You guys were watching. And, yes, you can draw your own conclusions from it. I don’t know how much of a bearing any of that had on the outcome. That stuff always happens during matches. It doesn’t always influence the outcome. But when you’re losing at the end, it’s easy to get frustrated at things. That was it.”
Source: News Corp.
Photo: Michael Steele / Getty.
