A very interesting situation happened in one of the WTA doubles matches at the 2023 Roland Garros.
The 16th-seeded Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were playing against unseeded Marie Bouzkova and Sara Sorribes Tormo in the third round of the women's doubles tournament at the 2023 Roland Garros.
For both teams, the draw opened up nicely after the first-seeded Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova were eliminated already in the first round of the competition and so all teams in that part of the draw suddenly got a chance to make it to the quarterfinals.
Eventually, it was Kato and Sutjiadi fighting for the spot against Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo, but the match didn't end in a way that neither players nor fans on Court 14 expected to see after the 16th-seeded team was disqualified.
The first set was really tense and dramatic as Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo led 4-2, but the seeded team was able to come back and even had three set points in the tenth game.
Eventually, Kato and Sutjiadi lost the lead and also lost the first set in a tie-break, 1-7. However, the second set was going much better for them. After an early break, they led 3-1 in the first set, but then the incident happen.
After one of the rallies was finished, Miyu Kato wanted to return the ball to the other side of the court, hitting one of the ball girls in the process. The ball wasn't really hit in anger, and the ball girl could have also possibly avoided it, but that didn't happen.
Initially, the ball girl got scared and started crying as the Japanese player immediately went to confront her and apologize. But the damage has been done and the supervisor was called to the court.
After a lengthy discussion and investigation, Kato and Sutjiadi were disqualified, sending Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo to the quarterfinals of the 2023 Roland Garros.
It's a similar incident to Novak Djokovic's from US Open only a few years ago, but also to what happened to Mirra Andreeva just yesterday, yet the Russian avoided disqualification.
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