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A Chinese on-court interviewer appeared to censor Magda Linette, the world No 45 from Poland, as she tried to apologise for a joke about Covid.
In the week of the WTA Tour’s long-awaited return to Wuhan, Linette had managed to upset some locals with an ill-judged social-media post.
Wuhan – which last hosted a tournament in 2019 – is still best known for being the origin of the Covid pandemic, and Linette had posted a photograph of her train from Beijing to Wuhan on X (formerly Twitter).
She then added a caption in Polish which said “The virus database has been updated”.
On a turbulent day in the tennis world, Linette beat Liudmila Samsonova easily on Tuesday in her first-round match in Wuhan, but had to deal with some hostility from the crowd.
Linette’s tweet appeared to have irritated some of the fans who attended her match, as there were scattered shouts coming from the stands.
After closing out a 6-2, 6-2 victory, Linette then began her on-court interview by saying: “I know I offended some of you guys so I …”
At this point, the interviewer snatched the microphone back and said “OK, talk about your performance.”
Linette added: “Thank you so much for being so nice to me,” before leaving the court, but her interrupted apology was not passed on to the fans – at least, the fans who didn’t speak English.
Switching to Chinese, the interviewer said: “She said ‘Thank you’. That’s all from us today. The game is over.”
Spaniard sorry imitating Chinese face
Linette’s social-media embarrassment followed that of Paula Badosa, who apologised after a photo emerged of her imitating a Chinese face in Beijing last week.
The image, which was posted on Instagram by her coach Pol Toledo, showed Badosa in a restaurant holding chopsticks up to her eyes and squinting.
When Badosa was accused of racism by other Instagram users, she initially insisted that she hadn’t been “imitating Asian people”, but was instead “playing with my face and wrinkles. I love Asia and I have many Asian friends.”
She then moved to apologise with message on X saying: “Really sorry didn’t know this was offensive towards racism. My mistake. I take full responsibility. This mistakes [sic] will make me learn for next time.”
On Tuesday morning, Badosa – who is now the world No 15 – withdrew from Wuhan citing gastroenteritis.
Confrontations in Shanghai
Meanwhile, in Shanghai, there were two separate confrontations between players and umpires. The more dramatic of the two incidents involved Frances Tiafoe, the recent US Open semi-finalist, who yelled a series of four-letter words at Jimmy Pinoargote after incurring a time violation on the penultimate point of his lengthy 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 loss to Roman Safiullin.
As Tiafoe had already been warned for taking too much time, earlier in the match, he had to make do without a first serve at 5-5 in the deciding-set tie-break. After a long rally, he eventually lost the point, and then Safiullin closed out his win with an ace.
Tiafoe objected to the call as soon as it was made, saying that he had already started his service motion by the time the shot clock had run down. Pinoargote was unmoved.
After shaking hands with Safiullin, Tiafoe yelled “F— you man. F— you. Seriously man. You f—ed me the f—ing match. Three f—ing hours and you’re going to do that. Why? You f—ed the match up. Great f—ing job. F—!”
This year’s French Open finalist Alexander Zverev blew up over a “not up” call in his narrow 7-6, 2-6, 7-6 win over Tallon Griekspoor, even though replays showed that he had clearly reached the ball on the second bounce.
Turning to chair umpire Mohamed Lahyani, Zverev ranted that “umpires are f—ing up the tournament this year. Carlos Bernardes completely messed up Stan’s [Wawrinka] match yesterday [by mistakenly giving the first point of the crucial game to his opponent]. The guy doing Tiafoe’s match completely messed up Tiafoe’s match. And now this.
“Every grand slam final that I play, I lose because of you guys’ mistake,” added Zverev, who was denied an important point in May’s French Open final when a second serve from Carlos Alcaraz was mistakenly ruled to have landed on the line.
“I’ve played more than 80 matches this year, with injuries, with illness, with everything. And I cannot be bothered to go to China in October for you to screw up this. This is not possible. I’ve been playing for nine months now.”
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