Even the best tennis tournament in the world is not immune to mishaps. © APA/afp / HENRY NICHOLLS
The third Grand Slam tournament of the year starts in Wimbledon on Monday. During the women’s draw, a strange scene occurred that caused a lot of confusion and laughter.
30. June 2024
From: sn
During the draw, the 32 seeded players were assigned to their positions in the tournament tree. While the top seed Iga Swiatek and the number two seed Coco Gauff were seeded in positions one and 128, the remaining players were assigned to groups. Everything went smoothly up to the first 16 players, but then an embarrassing mishap occurred.
New tournament referee Denise Parnell announced that 20th seed Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil had been moved to 24th in the bracket, but Mirra Andreeva’s name suddenly appeared on the official chart. 17-year-old Andreeva is seeded 24th, which apparently led to a technical misunderstanding that swapped her seeding position with her position in the bracket.
Mirra Andreeva unintentionally caused a stir. © APA/afp / ADRIAN DENNIS
The referee continued with the draw and did not notice the error. Eventually she noticed that Haddad Maia’s name had not been entered and one space remained empty. This caused considerable confusion among those in charge and laughter from the audience.
Parnell and her colleague desperately tried to save the situation, which led to further confusion. The names of several players were moved back and forth. After Parnell finally noticed the error, she assigned Haddad Maia the correct position on the table and continued the draw.
Then there was another misunderstanding: When Anna Kalinskaya was drawn, Parnell warned: “I read out her name, didn’t I?” There were no further mishaps on the part of those responsible. In the first round, Jannik Sinner will face the German Yannick Hanfmann.
2024-06-30 08:32:24
#Glitch #Wimbledon #draw #laughter #Tennis
