Andy Roddick suggests there is definitely a certain level of inconsistency when it comes to disqualifying players for hitting the balls in frustration as the former world No. 1 thinks Novak Dokovic's infamous 2020 US Open wasn't worse than the one that didn't warrant a Daniil Medvedev default over the weekend.
If you remember well, the Serb hit a chair umpire during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta - and after apologizing and pleading his case for several minutes - he didn't escape being thrown out.
Fast forward to this past Sunday, the fifth-ranked Russian lost a point to Ben Shelton in critical times late in the first set and he raised his racket and threw it towards the crowd.
Frances Tiafoe, who sitting on the Team World bench, instantly started arguing that the clash should end there. But the chair umpire didn't agree, explaining that there was no need for that because it didn't touch anyone nor anyone was injured.
Roddick: Medvedev's moment was more intentional...
"But also, this is another one of those rules in tennis where, you look at Novak when he got defaulted from the US Open, that was a fluke. In my opinion, that was way less intentional than what Daniil Medvedev did. He was swatting the ball back towards the tarp which you can do with no fault pretty much all the time. Novak didn't hit it out of bounds, it just happened to hit someone and he hit it with a little more force. This was actually actually more intentional. Listen, up is down, down is up, welcome to the rules of tennis," Roddick explained on Tennis Channel.
Since the Djokovic incident, there has been a lot of attention on similar situations.
Earlier this year, France's Terence Atmane hit a spectator after sending the ball into the French Open crowd. But after a female spectator said she was fine and after talking with the officials, the French tennis player avoided a default. That case left some baffled and asking where was the consistency in calling such situations.
