British tennis star Cameron Norrie accidentally hits a woman in the stands with a racket thrown in Auckland
British tennis star Cameron Norrie has apologized and avoided disqualification when a racket he threw in the air hit a spectator at the ATP Tour event in Auckland on Tuesday.
Auckland-born Norrie was facing a match point against Argentina’s Facundo Diaz Acosta when he lightly tossed his racket in the air. The racket hit a woman in the courtside box who was not injured.
Video of the incident he showed a woman in a hat who reacted quickly and deflected the racket as the crowd gasped.
Norrie received a warning from the umpire and lost 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the tournament. He reached the final in Auckland in 2023.
“I didn’t mean to do it, but it’s still not ideal to do it and I’ve never done anything like that,” Norrie said. (The viewer) “was laughing and I just said ‘sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she said ‘yes, I’m completely OK.’
“It wasn’t a big deal. But like we’ve seen with some of the other players, you can easily lose if he catches them in the wrong spot or if they’re not looking or something.
Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
“I didn’t mean to do that and it’s totally not for 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.”
According to ESPN, Norrie was ranked 49th in the world last year and 18th in the world in in 2023.
Novak Djokovic is disqualified from the 2020 US Open after she accidentally hit a linesman with the ball, and at the 2023 French Open, Miya Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were kicked out of the women’s doubles after a ball hit by Kato hit a ball girl.
Also in 2023, Australian tennis player Marc Polmans was kicked out of the final round of qualifying for the Shanghai Masters after hitting the ball in the face of the chair umpire.
As reported by the BBCCanadian Denis Shapovalov was deprived of hitting the referee with the ball during the Davis Cup match against Great Britain in 2017, while in 2012 the Argentine tennis player David Nalbandian was disqualified at after injuring the linesman kicking a billboard in his shin.
