British tennis star Cameron Norrie has apologized and avoided suspension when a racket he threw in the air hit a spectator at the ATP Tour tournament in Auckland on Tuesday.
Oakland native Nori faced match point against Argentina's Facundo Diaz Acosta when he tossed his racket slightly in the air. The racket hit a woman in a courtside box, who was not injured.
Video of the incident showed the woman in the hat, who reacted quickly and moved the racket away as the crowd gasped.
Nori received a warning from the chair umpire and lost 6-2, 6-3 in the first round of the tournament. He reached the final in Auckland in 2023.
“I didn't mean to do it, but it's still not perfect and I've never done anything like that,” Norrie said. (The audience) “laughed and I just said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that.'” And she said, “Yeah, I'm totally fine.”
“It wasn't a big problem. But as we've seen with some other players, you can easily default if they catch them in the wrong place, or they're not looking, or something like that.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
“I didn't mean to do that, and it's not my place to do something like that. I apologized very quickly and I want to apologize in general. I'm not happy with how I behaved.”
According to ESPN, Nori was ranked 49th in the world last year and 18th in the world 2023 year.
Novak Djokovic was disqualified at the 2020 US Open after accidentally hitting a linesman with the ball, and at the 2023 French Open, Miya Kato and Aldila Sujiadi were disqualified from the women's doubles after Kato's ball hit the ball girl.
Also in 2023, Australian tennis player Mark Polmans was ejected from the final round of qualifying for the Shanghai Masters after hitting the ball in the face of the chair umpire.
The BBC reportsthe Canadian Denis Shapovalov was in default hit the ball on the referee during a Davis Cup match against Great Britain in 2017, and in 2012, Argentine tennis player David Nalbandian was disqualified for after injuring the linesman kicking a billboard in the shin.