Nick Kyrgios was far from happy with the officials during his ill-tempered third-round match at the 2022 Wimbledon Championships, although he won the match in four sets.
Tsitsipas was in good form, having won his first career title in Mallorca on grass when he came to Wimbledon. He eked out a tight first set against Kyrgios in a tie-break. This was the pick of the men's third-round matches, and it certainly delivered on all facets.
Everything was going well for the Greek, who stayed competitive in the second set, too, against a fully charged-up Kyrgios. It already seemed that the set would head into another tie-break, but then the Australian man broke serve to level the score, much to the delight of the crowd.
After Tsitsipas lost the set, he fired a ball directly into the crowd, who were sitting just in the front row. It appeared that someone got hit by the ball, and Kyrgios demanded his opponent be defaulted.
Kyrgios argued with the umpire, Damien Dumusois, saying that he would have been defaulted if the roles had been reversed. You would have to agree with Kyrgios' assertion because the tournament fined him $10,000 for spitting in the direction of a fan after he beat Paul Jubb in the opening round.
Kyrgios compared the incident to Novak Djokovic's disqualification from the 2020 US Open when he accidentally hit a line judge. The 27-year-old requested additional supervisors when he could barely believe that Tsisipas was let off the hook. It's fair to say he was fortunate.
"Default or not? If that is me you are defaulting me. He has hit a ball in the f****** crowd. Are you dumb? It’s a default brother. It’s a default bro! What classifies as that then? What classifies it? So you can hit a ball into the crowd, hit someone and not get defaulted? Are you dumb?"
"I don’t care - I’m not playing until we get to the bottom of it. You can’t hit the ball into the crowd and it hits someone and it’s not a default? What happened with Novak [Djokovic] when he hit the ball into the girl - was it hard? Was she injured? She was injured! Oh my God. You need to get more supervisors then. I'm not playing until we get to the bottom of it. No, I want all of them."
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