Cameron Norrie, 29-year-old British tennis player, lost to Argentinian Facundo Díaz in the ASB Classic, also known as the Auckland Open, an ATP 250 Tour played a week before the Australian Open. Just before the match point, when Norrie lost 6-2, 6-3, the Brit threw his racquet in anger... hitting a woman in the crowd.
Norrie received a warning, but the match resumed, and he lost shortly after. After the game, he apologised: "I was not meaning to do that and it is completely not me to do something like that. I apologised very quickly and I want to apologise in general. I'm not happy with how I behaved", he said, as read in Tennis.com.
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The racquet flew in the air directly into a woman behind him. Thankfully, the spectator had quick reflexed and stopped the racquet with her hands. The player went to say sorry, and the spectator was unharmed and seemed to be amused by the incident.
Online, reaction is much different: many fans are complaining about why he didn't get penalised, as it has happened previously in not-so-similar circumstances, when the ball hit by the players hit accidentally the line judges (as it happened with Djokovic in the 2020 US Open), considering this time, it was Norrie, out of anger, who recklessly threw away his racquet.