Tennis star Cameron Norrie tosses racket into stands, hitting woman
'I wasn’t meaning to do that but it’s still not ideal to be doing that and I’ve never done something like that'
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Cameron Norrie nearly caused quite a racket during his tennis match against Facundo Diaz Acosta.
The British tennis star escaped with a warning after tossing his racket into the stands, hitting a female tennis fan at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand.
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Tennis star Cameron Norrie tosses racket into stands, hitting woman Back to video
The 29-year-old Norrie was trailing the first-round match 6-2, 5-3 when he hit a forehand return into the net. Out of frustration, he threw his racket backwards without looking, perhaps hoping to hit the back barrier.
Instead, he got a bit too much height on the toss and the racket hit a woman sitting in the front row.
Thankfully, the fan was able to block the incoming object with a quick reaction time.
Norrie received a warning from the chair umpire and he said the fan was unfazed by the incident.
“I wasn’t meaning to do that but it’s still not ideal to be doing that and I’ve never done something like that,” Norrie said.
“(The fan) was laughing and I just said, ‘So sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she said, ‘Yeah, I’m completely OK.’ That was not a big deal. But as we saw with some other players, you can easily be defaulted if it catches them in the wrong spot or they’re not looking or something.”
After the incident, Norrie went on to lose the game and the match in straight sets.
The Brit, who is ranked No. 48 in the world, got off lucky that the match wasn’t ended immediately. In recent similar incidents, players have received penalties and have been defaulted from matches for unruly behaviour.
Usually, though, those incidents occurred when a player has launched a ball – either purposefully or by accident — into the crowd or at a line judge.
“It is completely not me to do something like that. I apologized very quickly and I want to apologize in general. I’m not happy with how I behaved,” Norrie said.
A famous incident in recent years came during the 2020 U.S. Open when Novak Djokovic was disqualified after accidentally hitting a line judge in the throat with a ball.
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