PARIS — Frances Tiafoe rolled his eyes as soon as the question arrived from a reporter, then called it “comical” that the player who beat him in the French Open quarterfinals on Tuesday, Lorenzo Musetti, received only a warning for kicking a tennis ball that inadvertently hit a linesperson.
“I mean, obviously, he did that, and nothing happened. I think that’s comical,” No. 15 seed Tiafoe said after his 6-2, 4-6, 7-5, 6-2 loss to No. 8 Musetti. “Nothing happened, so there’s nothing really to talk about. Obviously, it’s not consistent, so it is what it is.”
Unlike at most top-level tennis tournaments, which rely on electronic line-calling, there are still humans on court at Roland-Garros to make rulings on whether shots land in or out. That was a separate gripe Tiafoe had Tuesday, because there were some calls he argued, including one that TV showed he was right about.
It’s happened in the past that players have forfeited matches for striking a chair umpire or a line judge with a ball and hurting them – whether on purpose or not. On Tuesday, the woman who was hit continued to officiate.
One of the most well-known examples of a player being disqualified came at the 2020 U.S. Open, where 24-time Grand Slam champion Novak Djokovic angrily swung his racket at a ball between games and accidentally hit a female line judge in the throat.
Musetti – who won a bronze medal for Italy at the Paris Olympics and was a semifinalist at Wimbledon last year – had just dropped a game to trail Tiafoe 5-3 in the second set of their match at Court Philippe-Chatrier.
As Musetti was given balls so he could serve in the next game, he took a left-footed swipe at one and it sailed into a female line judge making calls behind a baseline. Musetti apologized, and the chair umpire announced that he was being given a warning for a code violation.
There is no penalty for an initial warning of that sort.
“Honestly, it was a really unlucky coincidence. I was a little bit, honestly, scared, because I really didn’t want to harm (anybody), of course. So I immediately went to the line umpire, and I of course said, ‘Sorry, I apologize to everyone,'” Musetti said. “It was right to have a warning, but I think the umpire saw that there was no intention about that, and that’s why probably (he) let me continue.”
Soon, Tiafoe claimed that set. But Musetti took the last two to earn his first trip to the semifinals at Roland-Garros.
