Daniil Medvedev was one of the great stories of the first round at Wimbledon, but that’s not what folks will remember from his first appearance at the tournament. After upsetting No. 5 seed Stan Wawrinka on Monday, Medvedev lost his cool on Wednesday when he was defeated by Ruben Bemelmans. After his defeat, he grabbed his wallet and tossed coins at chair umpire Mariana Alves in a show of disrespect.
After falling two sets down, Medvedev worked back to force a fifth set. He even took a 2-0 lead in the deciding set before Bemelmans put him away.
Medvedev said he thought Alves made a bad call in the fifth set, which he ultimately lost 6-3. But bad call or not, that’s obviously not an excuse to meltdown. He quickly realized he was out of line and expressed his apology after the match to the media.
From ESPN:
“I was disappointed with the result of the match,” Medvedev said. “It was frustrating after a big win I had. All the match was not going well for me. So I was just very disappointing.
“In the heat of the moment, I did a bad thing. I apologize for this.”
[…]
“I don’t know why I did it. As I said, like, in the heat of the moment, I was frustrated to lose the match. Maybe there were some bad calls. It can happen in sports.”
Medvedev said he will accept any punishment that comes his way, but he has a history of calling out umpire bias that shouldn’t go unnoticed. Last year, he was disqualified mid-match from the Savannah Challenger tournament for making a racist comment after the umpire ruled a break point in his opponent’s favor.
[ESPN]
