Romanian tennis player Irina Begu, 31, sincerely apologized for the incident that occured during her French Open second round meeting.
63rd-ranked Begu lost her cool after dropping her serve in the third set of the meeting versus Ekaterina Alexandrova as the tossed her racket, which bounced off the ground and went flying into the stands.
According to those who were on the scene, the racket didn’t hit a kid but it scared him and he started crying loudly.
Irina-Camelia Begu just bounced her racket into the crowd, supervisor has been called. pic.twitter.com/EiIBNDAH2I
— Damian Kust (@damiankust) May 26, 2022
The supervisor was called but Begu escaped a disqualification.
However, Begu was hit with a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct.
In the end, Begu was able to put what happened behind her and claim a 6-7 (3) 6-3 6-4 win over Alexandrova.
After the match, Begu walked up to the kid and posed for a picture.
The kid’s family absolutely loved Begu’s gesture.
Begu: It was embarassing and I apologize
“It’s an embarrassing moment for me, so I don’t want to talk too much about it,” Begu said, per Eurosport. “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.”
Meanwhile, Begu has been through to the French Open third round for the first time since 2019.
Begu will now have a great chance to continue her French Open run as she plays next French wildcard Leolia Jeanjean.
On Thursday, Jeanjean stunned Karolina Pliskova in straight sets.
Begu and Jeanjean have no previous meetings.