Roland-Garros: Begu bounces racquet into stands, misses kid, avoids default, wins in three sets
A racquet bounced in ager landed up in the stands at Roland-Garros on Thursday but Irina-Camelia Begu managed to avoid a default and fight back for a three-set win in Paris
irina-Camelia Begu_Roland-Garros_2022
It was an eventful day on Court 13 at Roland-Garros for Romanian tennis player Irina-Camelia Begu. The world No 63 lost the first set of her second round match against 30th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova, fought back to win the second set and went down a break in the third set.
That’s when the match got very dramatic. Down an early break at 2-0 in the third set, Begu missed a shot on the first point of the third game and threw her racquet on her chair, which bounced off and went into the stands, just missing a kid.
The match was halted and the tournament supervisor called as Begu wondered if she would be defaulted from the match.
However, she was not, much to the ire of Alexandrova, and given a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Begu managed to break back and then fight back to win six of the final eight games and complete the 6-7, 6-3, 6-4 win in two hours and 35 minutes to reach the third round.
After the match, Begu did make some amends as she took the kid in her arms and posed for a picture with him.
This is not the first time that a player throwing a racquet on court has landed them in a hot soup. During his first round win, Andrey Rublev threw his racquet in frustration which he ended up deeply regretting.
Earlier this year, American Jenson Brooksby‘s racquet found its way to a ball kid while Nick Kyrgios‘ racquet missed another ball kid by the smallest of margins during the Indian Wells-Miami stretch.
For now, Irina-Camelia Begu is through to the third round at Roland-Garros for the fifth time in her career (best performance being the fourth round in 2016) where she will meet French wild card Leolia Jeanjean, who upset eighth seed Karolina Pliskova in straight sets earlier on Thursday.
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