Daily Times

British tennis star Cameron Norrie apologized and avoided disqualification when a racket he tossed in the air struck a spectator at the ATP Tour tournament in Auckland on Tuesday.

Auckland-born Norrie was facing match point against Facundo Diaz Acosta of Argentina when he lightly tossed his racket into the air. The racket struck a woman in a court-side box who was unhurt.

Norrie received a warning from the chair umpire and went on to lose 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the tournament. He reached the final in Auckland in 2023.

“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,” Norrie said. (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 apologized very quickly and I want to apologize in general. I´m not happy with how I behaved.” Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the 2020 US Open after accidentally hitting a line judge with a ball and at the 2023 French Open Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were defaulted from the women’s doubles after a ball hit by Kato struck a ball girl.

Also in 2023, Australian tennis player Marc Polmans was defaulted from the final round of qualifying at the Shanghai Masters after hitting a ball into the face of the chair umpire.