2023-06-04 19:12:18
Japan’s Miyu Kato just thought she was getting rid of a ball sent to the collectors from the baseline. Under pressure from his opponents, his involuntary gesture led to disqualification.
Played smoothly and bell from the back of the court, the ball unfortunately ended its course on the cap – and therefore the head – of a young ball collector. At Roland-Garros this Sunday, June 4, the pair of doubles Miyu Kato – Aldila Sutjiadi was disqualified for an involuntary gesture with fatal consequences.
With Kato and her Indonesian teammate leading 3-1 in the second set after conceding the first to their opponents Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes, the Japanese sent a ball from the net towards the ball boy who was on the side of the waitress. But that ball hit the pick-up in the back of the head.
Seeing the girl in tears, Bouzkova and Sorribes went to see the chair umpire. Kato immediately apologized to the picker. The player initially received a warning, but, after protests from Bouzkova and Sorribes, the supervisor was called to the court and decided to disqualify Kato and her partner from this women’s doubles third round match.
“I didn’t see what happened, but I saw that the girl was still crying a quarter of an hour later”Bouzkova commented. At first there was only a warning because the referee had not seen that the girl was crying and that she was in so much pain.
“We told the supervisor he needed to take a closer look at what happened because the girl was crying and the bullet hit her directly. It’s not like the ball bounced or was slow.”, added the Czech. A version that the images of the scene, which are looping on social networks, seem rather to deny.
At the US Open 2020, Novak Djokovic had been disqualified in similar circumstances: he had hit back, without looking, a ball which had directly hit a line judge.
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