Holger Rune angered the Madrid crowd recently when he erased the mark of a shot that his opponent contested.
It was a match between Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Holger Rune at the recent Madrid Open. Davidovich Fokina disagreed with a call from the hawk eye arguing with the umpire that it was the wrong call, later discussing it with the supervisor, while Rune went to the mark and simply erased it with his foot.
That did not go over well with the crowd who were booing him heavily after that action. Former player Jimmy Connors backed Rune on his podcast recently explaining that he had a similar thing happen to him at the 1977 US Open.
It was at the US Open. It was a semifinal against Corrado Barazzutti. Guess [Holger] Rune kind of felt the same way as I did, got a little tired of hearing all the bitching and moaning about it. I just went rubbed it [the ball mark] out and then it was over.
It was a surprising move by Rune but Connors gets it. In the end, you want to win and you want to get on with the match. While Connors won his match in 1977, Rune ultimately lost to Davidovich Fokina.
We went on but oh the admonishment that I got from the chair umpire, I felt really bad. Well, not so bad, I went on the win the match. But unfortunately, I did not win the tournament. I got to the final and lost to I think [Guillermo] Vilas.
It will be interesting to see how the young Dane approaches similar situations in the future. Recently, he was called 'the game's new antagonist' by Todd Woodbridge and while some don't like his approach to the matches, Rune seems to be enjoying them and always provides a great show for the fans.
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