Women's Tennis WTA Tour 2023 Road to Paris 2024

[Monzanator 3,599]

Last grass events before Wimbledon (which included many tactical withdrawals in the process):

 

Eastbourne 500

Madison Keys def. Darya Kasatkina 6-2 7-6(13)

 

Bad Homburg 250

Katerina Siniakova def. Lucia Bronzetti 6-2 7-6(5)

 

[Rafa Maciel 1,261]

Not a great look for  Amarissa Toth:

 

Tennis star is accused of 'a new low for sportsmanship' after her 'disgusting' acts on the court led to her opponent having a panic attack | Daily Mail Online

[Vektor 3,195]

Winning a tennis match by causing a panic attack, that is some advanced level of strategy. 

 

Joking aside, Tóth obviously should have been more patient and understanding instead of adding fuel to the fire. But it's also a bad look for women's tennis if a GS winner like Zhang can be forced to withdraw with some basic asshole behavior. If someone gets a panic attack under these circumstances, maybe they shouldn't be participating in a professional sports tournament. You would expect a higher level of professionalism in one of the highest paying individual sports in the world. 

[rybak 2,694]

 

[rybak 2,694]

7 hours ago, Vektor said:

Winning a tennis match by causing a panic attack, that is some advanced level of strategy. 

 

Joking aside, Tóth obviously should have been more patient and understanding instead of adding fuel to the fire. But it's also a bad look for women's tennis if a GS winner like Zhang can be forced to withdraw with some basic asshole behavior. If someone gets a panic attack under these circumstances, maybe they shouldn't be participating in a professional sports tournament. You would expect a higher level of professionalism in one of the highest paying individual sports in the world. 

 

[Olympian1010 7,483]

You have appreciate how spectators will lightly applaud someone for erasing a ball mark before it can be checked (even if it wouldn’t influence the call in anyway), but are fulling willing to boo a player for opting out of a non-compulsory handshake 

[Rafa Maciel 1,261]

2 hours ago, rybak said:

 

Having watched the match back, there was a point just after she had received the time violation when she definitely appeared to react to something that was said from within the crowd behind Toth. Just after the comment was made, the camera cut to the referee who could be seen shrugging her shoulders. After she defaulted the match you could also see her gesturing to the crowd. Although also seeing suggestions that Zhang's supporters were being abusive towards Toth. 

 

Although it is difficult to hear the entire discussion that were going on, overall I don't think that the situation was handled well by either the match umpire or the referee. The line judge initially indicated that the ball was in before changing the call to out. Normally in those circumstances, the umpire would take a bit of time making the call and would engage with the player to show why they were calling the ball in or out. The umpire did none of that- she went straight to the line, said it was out and returned to the chair. She didn't even look at it from different angle - if anything she was already indicating that it was out before she had got to the mark. 

 

When the referee came on court, she didn't do anything to defuse the situation - it's never a great look when you use the line "that's not my job." It really didn't look like the referee was willing to engage with Zhang and she spent a lot of the time talking with the umpire and having her back to Zhang. 

 

For Toth's part, she really didn't need to erase the mark. The fact that she went out of her way to remove it was just unnecessary. It would have been different if she had been in the area and had scuffed it or whatever, but she strode out to it from the baseline and made a point of erasing it.  Other than that, it wasn't a great look for her to be celebrating a victory when she could see her opponent was clearly distressed - she could have waited until Zhang had left the court but that comes from her lack of experience. 

 

I think Toth is going to get a lot of flack over this and perhaps not all of it is deserved.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Rafa Maciel

[hckošice 13,273]

wow, I never thought I will find someone less likeable than Bouchard in womens tennis circuit. but here it is

[Vektor 3,195]

11 hours ago, rybak said:

 

I can't say anything about how the umpire behaved, but as far as the Hungarians involved in this controversy are concerned, I wouldn't call their behavior racist. There are anti-China sentiments in this country and Zhang may have got unfortunate comments because of that, but that's not racism, just like how the hate towards Russian athletes isn't racist in nature. China is seen by many as an invasive country that is exploiting Hungary's corruption to gain control in the region, so I think the hate towards China will grow among the population, especially if they continue to build battery plants here, which the population universally dislikes.

[Vektor 3,195]

Ultimately what I don't want is the racism angle to be pushed. Don't use internal American politics in Europe. Just because Asian Americans are dealing with racism in America, it doesn't meant that a situation like this with an Chinese athlete is fueled by racism. China in general is using the race card a lot of time to try to bend the narrative. They have earned their negative reputation in the Western world, and innocent Chinese athletes like Zhang may suffer the consequences of that.

 

Tóth should make an apology for not handling the situation well and the umpire should get demoted for doing a very poor job.  But the level of hate Tóth and Hungary are getting here went way over the line and it's clearly the result of anti-Hungarian bias in the Western world (Thanks, Orbán!), just like how the anti-China bias may have caused this incident.