Aussie tennis legend Nick Kyrgios slammed chair umpire Marijana Veljovic as he launched into a verbal tirade about some malfunctioning technology that impacted his game.
Kyrgios was furious about a malfunctioning net-cord vibration-detecting device consistently played up, counting some of his serves as lets.
He complained to the umpire more than five times about the device and even hammered his racquet on top of the tap after two serves were ruled as lets.
“It’s bulls***, look at the score,” he complained to the umpire.
“It’s ruining the game. It’s ruining the game. You don’t understand it’s f***ing one-all in the fifth set.”
It could have been his third code violation of the night, but Veljovic was feeling lenient.
Kyrgios threatened to stop playing earlier in the match due to the technology continuing to malfunction.
“Turn the machine off, it’s ruining the game, you’ve gotta understand me,” he said.
“It’s missing the net by that much. How do you not understand that? Did you turn it off?
“Turn it off. I’m not playing until you turn it off. It’s this far off the net.”
He expanded on the problem in a post-match press conference, as he defeated France’s Ugo Humbert in a 5-7 6-4 2-6 6-4 win.
“Having technology like that, you sound like an idiot trying to argue against it. But even when he (Humbert) was serving, it was literally this far (gestures with his hands to indicate about 20cm) over the net and the net thing went off. I was like there’s no chance this was accurate,” Kyrgios said.
“If you have a device where you can turn down the sensitivities, I just think there’s too many variables.
“I don’t know. I don’t have the solution … maybe they need to upgrade their technology.”
