British tennis star Cameron Norrie apologized and avoided disqualification when a racquet 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 racquet into the air. The racquet struck a woman in a court-side box who was unhurt.
Video of the incident showed a woman in a hat reacting quickly and deflecting the racquet away as the crowd gasped.
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.
Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
“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.”
According to ESPN, Norrie was ranked 49th in the world last year and 18th in the world in 2023.
Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the 2020 U.S. 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.
According to the BBC, Canada’s Denis Shapovalov was defaulted for hitting the umpire with a ball during a 2017 Davis Cup match against Great Britain, while in 2012 Argentine tennis player David Nalbandian was disqualified at after injuring a line judge by kicking an advertising board into his shin.