Tommy Paul was preparing for his match against Carlos Alcaraz at the 2022 Cincinnati Open when he did something unexpected.
Paul has slowly but surely become one of the best players in the world. He might not be considered the top favorite at many events, but the American player is certainly up there among the best.
Whether it’s his powerful serve or his devastating forehand, he’s slowly but surely improved over the years and gotten to a level where beating somebody like Alcaraz wouldn’t be a huge surprise.
He just did it last week in Toronto after doing the same in Montreal the year before. To do well in a tennis match, players need a good warm-up, and Paul was certainly following that advice.
The American was practicing his serve and putting a decent amount of power into it ahead of his match against Alcaraz in Cincinnati. The power was unfortunately felt by the match umpire, Fergus Murphy, who was chilling in his chair, observing the warm-up.
He didn’t notice a ball flying towards his face, which ended up hitting him in the upper body. Paul immediately ran over to the umpire to apologize, and to his credit, the umpire shook it off without any problems.
"It's okay. It's okay. I just... Maybe I... It's good I didn't see it. That's okay."
Murphy quickly asserted that he understood it was a mistake and that it wasn’t a huge problem. Situations like these are tricky, mostly because people can get hurt by it. It didn’t happen this time around, which is good, but overall, it’s also dangerous for the players.
If things like this happen during a match, a player can be defaulted, as Novak Djokovic’s US Open experience proved. He hit a line umpire and was defaulted despite it obviously being unintentional.
Overall though, Paul was able to continue his warm-up without any problems, and the umpire was fine to continue doing his job as well. The match would proceed without any incidents after, and Alcaraz was able to win it 7-6(6), 6-7(0), 6-3.