The Chile Open in Santiago has been under a lot of fire for subpar court quality, which pushed rising ATP star Arthur Fils over the edge in his most recent match there.
The Frenchman made an interesting calendar choice this year, opting to go to South America instead of playing in Europe and the Middle East. He's a pretty decent clay player but not as good as he is on the hard courts, so many questioned the decision.
It got questioned even more after he didn't deliver the best results for much of it, though his best outing came in the last event - the Chile Open. He made it to the quarter-final but was beaten by Pedro Martinez in a pretty competitive three-set match.
During the match Fils got really frustrated with the court which has been in subpar condition for most of the week. The ball simply drops completely dead on certain parts, causing frustration among the players.
The outburst was quite aggressive from Fils, who used all sorts of obscene language during his talk with the supervisor. Fils argued that it was impossible for the supervisor to know whether it was possible to play on the court because he was no athlete. He even asked him.
"Are you a f**king athlete? Are you a f**king athlete? How do you know if it's possible to play on this court? I told you before the tournament. What happened now? Answer my f**king question?"
The situation was quite interesting to observe in light of what happened recently in Dubai with Andrey Rublev. Rublev was essentially defaulted for shouting at an umpire and using multiple bad words.
Fils did something fairly similar, albeit not the same. One got deafulted and the other didn't. It seems like it's time to overhaul the rulebook and set firm boundaries on what's acceptable or not.
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