Worker triggers tennis player by bizarrely entering court on set point | Tennis | Sport

A tennis match on the ATP Challenger Tour was interrupted on a set point after a maintenance worker ran across the court while one of the players was about to serve. The incident occurred during a second-round match at the Ethias Province Open, a Challenger 500 tournament that is being held for the first time in Liege, Belgium.

Sandro Kopp, 26, was serving with the advantage over Manas Dhamne, 18, in their tenth game to force a deciding third set. The teenager won the opener on the clay 7-6(4) and was at one stage 5-2 down in the second before breaking back and then holding in the next service game to keep himself in it before Kopp began serving for the set.

Dhamne then saved three set points, with the interruption happening as his opponent was about to try and convert at the fourth time of asking. A maintenance worker who had been working on a court next to where they were playing inexplicably wandered onto the court while Kopp was bouncing the ball before tossing it up to hit.

Fortunately for the intruder, he spotted what was happening before serving. After taking a second to process what was happening, he turned away and exclaimed: “Oh my God!”

Kopp then briefly walked off the court in the same direction as the worker, but did not appear to make a beeline for them or say anything; instead, he soon returned to resume play. The world No. 293 then lost the next three points in a row to lose the game, with his final shot being a wild one that skewed high up in the air off his racket and never had a chance of staying in.

Despite how that game ended, he rallied in the next one and had a break-point chance, but again lost three straight points from that position, which gave Dhamne the lead. However, rather than subsiding, Kopp held in the 12th to force a tiebreaker. Once again, he started strongly, taking a 5-2 lead before losing four straight points to give Dhamne a match point. It ended agonisingly for Kopp, who just about managed to get what proved to be his final return over with a helping hand from the net.

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His teenage opponent replied with a deftly sliced shot that left Kopp sprinting across the court, only to get there fractionally late, with the chair umpire adjudging that it had bounced for a second time just before he returned it. Adding insult to injury, the shot left Dhamne with no chance, his reply ending up in the net.

However, it did not matter, as the umpire had called out, to Kopp’s disbelief, and was in the perfect position to see it, with the bounce being right in front of his chair. Kopp screamed “No!” and immediately raised his hands to his head after stopping mid-skid, having realised what happened.

Kopp continued to say “no” several more times while wandering around the court with both hands still on his head, before eventually asking the umpire: “Are you kidding me?” After trying to plead in vain that it was “backspin”, Kopp exclaimed, “I can’t believe it!”

After eventually shaking hands with Dhamne, he called the umpire a “disgrace”. “You’re a disgrace,” Kopp said. “How can you do that?” Becoming increasingly desperate, he asked people watching around the court whether it bounced once or twice. One appeared to agree with Kopp, but by then the umpire had stood up from his chair, and after another conversation, left the court.