Iga Swiatek briefly clashed with umpire Marija Cicak at the end of her match against Marketa Vondrousova at the 2023 Cincinnati Masters.
The Polish player was called for a time violation by umpire Cicak, who is pretty strict with enforcing the rules, resulting in words being exchanged. Swiatek herself noted that when she was asked about that following her win over Marketa Vondrousova.
She explained that she generally doesn't have any problems with Cicak as she deems her a great umpire but hoped for a lax attitude towards the time rules. They played some physical and long rallies, so Swiatek simply wanted to catch her breath a bit.
No, no, I wouldn't say 'tension'. I respect Marija Cicak, she's a great umpire. But overall she's really strict with the rules and she's applying them always, looking at even like one second and everything. Yeah, last two games, we played some longer rallies so I felt like I need time to just catch my breath, but Marketa didn't really let me do that. We have, what, 23 or 25 seconds?
Vondrousova herself pushed for a quick turnaround between points, something Swiatek wasn't doing. Common courtesy in tennis is to be ready when the serving player is ready, but Swiatek wasn't, and she got called for the violation once the clock hit zero.
She was always ready when there was still 20 seconds. I'm using that break to get ready for the next point. Here I didn't really have time, so I wanted to kind of steal a few seconds for myself. I'll be honest with you. I was always
The rule is actually that the time is for her. When she's ready, I have to be ready. Like, she was ready really fast, you know? I mean, I just told Marija Cicak that I'm human, I need to breathe, you know.
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