Thanasi Kokkinakis has been involved in a heated net exchange that has the tennis world talking.
The Aussie star was fired up after a prickly loss to Spanish rival Jaume Munar at the Madrid Open and the tension threatened to boil over as they met at the net after match point.
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Earlier the pair traded verbal barbs during the first set tie-break when Kokkinakis told the umpire about his opponent repeatedly talking to his coach, who was sitting courtside.
Munar agitatedly tried to interject as Kokkinakis was speaking to the chair umpire.
Kokkinakis responded to his opponent by saying, “Bro, you don’t shut up.”
He then told the match official: “I just thought it was rich for him to complain about talking because he’s done the same thing the whole time”.
The pair went at it again in the second set with Kokkinakis leading 5-2 before Munar came back to win 7-6 (9-7) 7-6 (7-3).
That wasn’t the end of it.
After shaking hands at the end the pair exchanged words and Munar could be heard saying: “Don’t tell me to shut up again”.
Kokkinakis could be heard responding: “Or what?”.
They pair were talking for almost two minutes and the chair umpire at one point tried to interject.
It ended with a slightly-cool second handshake.
It was one of several dramatic moments on the opening day of the Masters 1000 event, which began with former US Open champion Emma Raducanu pulling out before her first match.
Raducanu is set to drop out of the top 100.
She said through tournament officials that a hand injury forced her to quit the event — coming just hours after her frosty press conference was cut.
Raducanu has been beset by health problems this year, suffering from a wrist injury during her first round defeat by Bianca Andreescu in the Miami Open in March.
“I’m able to play in the short-term, but the current solutions aren’t very viable long-term,” said Raducanu after defeat in Miami.
Raducanu, who has also suffered from tonsillitis, has only played 10 matches this season and won five.
She withdrew from events in Auckland and Austin earlier this year and will now be targeting Rome and the French Open, which starts May 28.
Raducanu had told reporters in Madrid her wrist was “OK” amid a tense news conference Tuesday.
Since becoming the first qualifier in history to win a Grand Slam, Raducanu has burned through a string of coaches, currently working with Sebastian Sachs
— with AFP
