Holger Rune had a really unpleasant experience at the 2023 Italian Open when he was booed by the crowd already when entering the court.
Playing a home player at a tournament is never easy and the young Dane knows a lot about it. After winning the 2023 Munich Open, Rune moved to Madrid for an ATP 1000 event. Already in his second match, he played against home player Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and it didn't really go well.
After an incident with a hawk eye, the young Dane erased a ball mark which made the Spanish crowd boo him every time they got a chance. Eventually, he lost the match in three sets but soon turned his focus to the 2023 Italian Open.
The 20-year-old then explained his approach, saying that he just wanted to play tennis, and even though he was branded 'the game's new antagonist', Rune explained that he doesn't agree with the claim that he's a new bad boy in tennis.
However, some fans probably see it differently and it was obvious during his third-round match against Fabio Fognini at the 2023 Italian Open. The Italian managed to beat Andy Murray and Miomir Kecmanovic and the crowd in Rome wanted to get behind him also against the seventh seed.
Although Rune predicted a wild match against Fognini, the way things started shaping up already after a few seconds surely wasn't something that he was expecting. When the Dane started entering the court, the fans at Foro Italico started booing, something really rare in the world of tennis.
Yet, despite trying their best to put off the young Dane, Rune prevailed, winning the match 6-4, 6-2 to set up a fourth-round clash with qualifier Alexei Popyrin, who stunned the 10th-seeded Felix Auger-Aliassime earlier in the tournament.
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