A bizarre situation occurred this week at the 2022 Canadian Open in Montreal when a tennis ball caused confusion in two matches played on courts next to each other.
At bigger ATP events, tournament organizers have to have many tennis courts available, and as a result, the courts are often divided only by one wall, which makes the whole atmosphere very interesting.
On the one hand, fans feel that they are literally in the middle of a tennis tournament; on the other hand, often, unwanted noise of loud celebrations, outcalls, or fans cheering can come from the other court in the worst possible moment.
However, as the 2022 Canadian Open in Montreal showed, it doesn't have to be only the loud noise coming from the other court. During a bizarre sequence of events, two matches were stopped multiple times because of one tennis ball.
On Court 5, Santiago Gonzalez and Andres Molteni were battling it out in the first-round doubles match against the eighth-seeded Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah.
Only one wall away from them, on Court 9, the twelfth-seeded Diego Schwartzman was playing against Albert Ramos in the second round of the tournament, and that's where the story begins.
During the fourth game of the first set, Farah smashed the ball out of their opponent's reach but also out of the court, and since the two courts were so close, it landed on Court 9, as umpire Mohamed Lahyani had to call let and stop the rally.
Ramos, who had a game point at the time, sent the ball back, but what followed after added to the true bizarreness of the situation. Cabal and Farah thought it was a ball from the other court, probably forgetting about the previous rally, so they sent the ball back again.
The ball once again disturbed Ramos, who was about to serve, but this time around, umpire Lahyani stepped in and asked the ball kid to give him the ball, knowing that if they sent it back, it could have caused even more confusion.
The situation proved to be costly for Ramos, who lost his serve despite having a game point when the situation started, but eventually, he won the match in two sets 6-4, 6-2.
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