BOY IN TEARS AS PLAYER’S RACKET BOUNCES INTO CROWD

ROMANIAN player Irina-Camelia Begu was lucky not to be disqualified from the French Open yesterday after she threw her racket and it bounced into the crowd, reducing a young spectator to tears. The 31-year-old was trailing Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova 2-0 in the deciding set when she flicked her racket on to the clay in frustration. It rebounded into the stands and flew towards a boy, not actually hitting him but startling him to such an extent that he was audibly sobbing. The match was held up for five minutes while the tournament supervisor was called to the court and conferred with the umpire. They surprisingly decided the world No 63 would receive only a code violation and a warning, rather than being defaulted from the match like Novak Djokovic was at the 2020 US Open, when he hit a line judge with a ball. Begu gave the boy a hug and posed for a photo with him after the match, and later said: ‘It’s an embarrassing moment for me. I want to apologise. My whole career I didn’t do something like this, and I feel really bad and sorry.’ Alexandrova contested the call, whacked a ball out of the court in anger and was eliminated after losing six of the next eight games. The beaten 30th seed wrote on Instagram: ‘Seems like the rules were against me. This shouldn’t be happening. We are responsible for our racket.’ Last night, Roland Garros said in a statement: ‘After an initial scare the spectator turned out to be OK. The Grand Slam supervisor spoke with the parents, who confirmed the child was not injured. According to the procedures, a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct was issued.’