MADRID, November 1st (dpa/EP) –
Tennis player Daniil Medvedev denied having raised his middle finger – the typical ‘comb’ gesture – to the public after being booed during his defeat against Grigor Dimitrov 6-3, 6-7 (4-7) and 7-6 (7-2) at the Rolex Paris Masters.
The Russian fell in the round of 32 and even stopped playing in the second set until the booing inside the Accor Arena stopped, sparking an argument with referee Renaud Lichtenstein after he was given an official time violation.
The world number three admitted that he did not want to continue playing, but also knew that he risked being disqualified from the match if he refused to do so. In the second set, when, with the score at 5-5, he received boos from the Parisian public after throwing his racket when he was preparing to serve.
Medvedev gestured to the crowd to quiet down, returned to his bench in protest and told the referee that he would not play until they stopped booing him. In turn, Medvedev received the time violation for delaying the game.
In the end, the Bulgarian Dimitrov won in three sets, after letting six match points escape, before getting rid of his rival in the seventh to advance to the second round. Medvedev received more boos as he left the court and appeared to give the crowd the middle finger, something he later denied.
After the match, he declared at a press conference: “I just looked at my nails, like that, it’s nothing more than that. Why would I do that to this beautiful Paris Bercy audience? I threw the racket, they booed me, normal. I don’t see any problem in it,” he said.
“I go to serve and they applaud or something, but I want to serve so they shouldn’t applaud, so I keep serving and the referee was talking during this, so Grigor wasn’t ready. This happens, but they boo me, I didn’t see why So I didn’t want to play and that’s really the end of the story,” he argued.
“I told myself ‘okay, until they boo I’m not going to play, but the Bercy crowd won’t stop booing and then when they gave me the code I said ‘do I really want to be disqualified and end the game on this note?’ “So I kept playing,” the tennis player continued.