By Shrivathsa Sridhar
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Jeremy Chardy lost a bizarre point and with it, his cool, at the Australian Open on Thursday as the furious Frenchman accused the chair umpire of lying during his 6-4 6-4 6-1 second-round defeat by Briton Dan Evans.
Facing a break point in the opening set a ball dropped out of Chardy’s pocket midway through a rally and the Frenchman put a forehand into the net with his next shot to lose the point.
Chardy immediately appealed to the chair umpire but Miriam Bley ruled that the point would not be replayed, with Evans pointing out that he neither saw the ball drop out of the pocket nor did he complain about it.
Chardy then unloaded.
“We play with someone who cannot umpire,” Chardy said. “In my life, 20 years I’ve never had one umpire bad like you. Where are you looking? You looking at the birds? The clouds?
“It’s the biggest mistake of the Australian Open. There’s not one umpire on tour that does this mistake, not one.”
He then called for a supervisor and said: “If you don’t confirm that I called let, I lose all respect for you. She’s lying. Can she have a fine? When we do something bad we are fined, can she have a fine?”
Evans, who next faces Andrey Rublev or Emil Ruusuvuori in the third round, did not have much sympathy for Chardy.
“I think the rule should be if a ball comes out of your pocket, you lose the point,” he said. “He missed the ball.
“If a ball comes out your pocket, it’s your own fault.”
Chardy said later in a news conference that he expected the chair umpire to stop the point.
“She says she didn’t even see the ball. I don’t know what she’s doing because she doesn’t call in or out. She just called the score, and if she doesn’t watch the point, I don’t know why she’s on the chair. That’s it.”
Chardy reiterated his call for officials to be fined for errors they make.
“If I miss a point, then break my racquet, I’ll get fined. You can do a huge mistake, and nothing will happen to you,” Chardy said.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
