Cincinnati (AFP) – Britain’s Jack Draper scored a controversial 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime into the ATP Cincinnati Open quarter-finals on a dubious line call without technology review.
The situation erupted on match point late Friday at the ATP Masters 1000 event, the last big US Open tune-up, with no video technology onsite. The chair umpire was unable to make a clear call on a ball that looked to have hit the court on the Briton’s side of the court just as Draper’s racquet met the ball at the same instant, landing a winner.
While both men were agreeable to a re-play, officials could not make a ruling without the benefit of non-existent video review capacity, standard at big events like the Grand Slams. After several minutes of discussion at the chair, the shot by Draper was allowed to stand, sending him into the quarter-finals for the second time at the Masters 1000 level.
“I didn’t see what happened,” Draper said. “The umpire did not call a double-bounce. As a player, I was focusing on what I was doing. If the supervisor (called to the court) had said that it was, I 100% would have repeated the point. It’s not fair to Felix (for me) to win the match that way and I would have been happy to do the right thing. But I couldn’t make the call myself.”
© 2024 AFP
