ANDY RODDICK WAS already enjoying a challenging opening to his campaign at the ATP Cincinnati Masters when an untimely double-fault prompted the former US Open champion to fire a tennis ball into the crowd.
Given he’d already been cautioned earlier in the match for throwing his racket, the umpire immediately issued Roddick with a one-point penalty, a punishment that, coming as it did at break point, handed the game in progress to the American’s opponent, Philipp Kohlschreiber.
More out of frustration than any genuine sense of injustice, the player attempted to remonstrate with chair umpire Carlos Bernardes.
Roddick later admitted he regretted the shot nearly as soon as he hit it, but expressed frustration at the ATP’s approach to discipline:
“It’s so frustrating. I certainly accept what I did,” Roddick said. “I put him in a bad situation out there, but I do think it’s stupid in tennis that — I mean, in football if someone throws a helmet on the sideline, it’s their helmet. We wonder where we lose our ratings battles to the WWF, Monday Night Raw.”
Although the NFL penalizes players who do things such as throwing their helmets, Roddick would like to see tennis players get a little more leeway in such situations. He cited John McEnroe, for one.
“The guy is still getting endorsements because he was allowed to throw” things, Roddick said. “I understand where (Bernardes) is coming from, but at a certain point, you know, you hit a tennis ball into a stadium, someone goes home with a souvenir, and it pretty much ruins the match from there” to penalize the player.
– Additional reporting by the AP
