Canadian tennis star Felix Auger-Aliassime had every reason to blow up after being eliminated from the Cincinnati Open last night.
The Canadian fell to Great Britain’s Jack Draper 7-5, 4-6, 4-6 in a third-round match up. The ending, however, was extremely controversial.
With Draper serving while up 40-30 for the match, Auger-Aliassime appeared to hit a fantastic return, which his opponent botched. The ball looked as though it had bounced off Draper’s racquet and into the ground before getting back over the net. The chair ump saw it differently, however, awarding both the point and the match to Draper.
Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime is as classy as it gets.
A masterclass of sportsmanship when there was a lack of it around him.
To show up with this much grace and poise in that moment is commendable. Let’s see if the umpire admits he was wrong.
— Devin Heroux (@Devin_Heroux) August 17, 2024
“Did you not see the ball bounce on the floor?” Auger-Aliassime asked the chair ump. “He shanked it on the floor!”
“I didn’t see that,” the chair ump responded.
Draper, meanwhile, said he was open to replaying the point if the chair ump felt the ball had bounced on his side after he made contact with it. He claimed, however, that he wasn’t sure whether it had bounced or not, something Auger-Aliassime disagreed with, but understood.
“You’ve played enough that you know when you hit it, you know where it went,” Auger-Aliassime told his opponent.
Tennis doesn’t allow for a video review on anything other than line challenge calls, though debate sparked up online following this incident on whether or not that should change.
While Auger-Aliassime made it clear to the chair ump that he would feel “Ridiculous” once he saw a replay, the 24-year-old handled the entire situation with plenty of class, even shaking Draper’s hand before the two left the court.
It was an even more frustrating loss for Auger-Aliassime, given the major high he was coming off of earlier in the day, having knocked off world No. 5 Casper Ruud in straight sets. That win had come just two weeks after he was able to defeat Ruud at the Paris 2024 Olympics, where he wound up narrowly missing out on a medal with a fourth-placed finish.
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