Romanian tennis player Irina Begu was hit by a $10,000 fine from the French Tennis Federation (FFT) following the incident that occured during her second round match at Roland Garros.
Down by a break in the third set, Begu threw her racket – which bounced and went flying into the stands.
A young fan in the stands got scared and started crying.
Those who were at the scene said the racket didn’t hit the kid but it scared him.
The supervisor was called but Begu avoided a disqualification as the chair umpire hit her only with a code violation.
Begu recovered from a break down in the third set and defeated Ekaterina Alexandrova to progress into the next round.
Begu apologized for an ’embarassing moment’
“It’s an embarrassing moment for me, so I don’t want to talk too much about it,” Begu said after the match. “I just want to apologize. My whole career I didn’t do something like this, and I feel really bad and sorry. So I’m just going to say again, sorry for the incident and, yeah, it was just an embarrassing moment for me. It was, you know, you hit the clay with the racquet, but you never expect to fly that much. It was, as I said, embarrassing moment for me and I just want to end it and not talk about it and apologise again.”
Some had a hard time understanding why Begu wasn’t disqualified for the incident.
Eurosport tennis expert Tim Henman called Begu’s action “unacceptable” and said she Romanian was extremely lucky to avoid a disqualification.
“It is unacceptable,” he said in the Eurosport studio. “It is inevitable players will get frustrated and players will throw rackets, but they will need to take responsibility for where that racket goes. And if you throw it like that you are at risk of it bouncing and it goes into the crowd and hits a child that’s in tears. Incredibly lucky not to be disqualified.”