An irritated Caroline Wozniacki appeared to taunt her first-round opponent, Mayar Sherif, midway through a rally at the Paris Olympics.
The former World No. 1 is playing in her fourth Olympics after receiving a wild card into the women's singles tournament on the basis of her status as a Grand Slam champion. Her best result remains a quarterfinal showing at the 2012 London Olympics.
Wozniacki revealed after her wild card entry that representing Denmark at the Olympic Games was one of the main reasons she decided to come out of retirement 12 months ago.
Sherif, meanwhile, qualified for her second Olympics by winning the bronze medal at the African Games in Ghana earlier this year. She replaced Angella Okutoyi in the draw after the Kenyan failed to meet the entry cut-off of being ranked in the Top 400 by the deadline.
The Egyptian was the slight favorite going into the match because of her strong affinity for the surface. Sherif had also been in good form on clay this season, winning 24 matches and reaching five finals at all levels.
By contrast, Wozniacki had just one win on clay this year from Charleston and did not compete at Roland Garros in late May. In fact, before this year, she had not played on clay since 2019, largely because of her retirement from professional tennis in 2020.
And the first set was evident of the gulf in clay-court prowess between them right now, as Sherif broke Wozniacki's serve three times. The 28-year-old World No. 82 looked on course for a straight sets victory when she secured a decisive break for a 5-4 lead in the second set.
But serving for the match, Sherif lost her radar and dropped the next three games to hand over the second set to the experienced Dane. And that collapse played on her mind because the third set was dominated by the former Australian Open champion.
The slugfest turned into a chaotic battle of the grunts in the decider when Wozniacki began mocking Sherif's sharp, loud, and forceful way of grunting. It's very common for tennis players to grunt just before hitting a ball as a natural response to the physical exertion involved.
Some players do it to regulate their breathing and free up built-up tension. Strangely enough, Wozniacki seemingly did it at the start of the third set purposely to ridicule her opponent, as seen and heard in the video below, which has been shared by a fan on X (formerly Twitter).
Wozniacki is clearly not a fan of grunting in matches and has previously slammed those who do it, most notably in matches against Shuai Zhang at the 2016 Indian Wells Open and Monica Niculescu in Doha two years later. She made her point by imitating their grunts at the chair umpire as she found them to be distracting.
The 34-year-old turned her match against Sherif around and won 2-6, 7-5, 6-1 after almost two and a half hours. She will face USA's Danielle Collins in the second round.
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