Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi were disqualified from the French Open after a ball hit in between points by Kato hit a ball girl during their third-round match on Sunday.
After the women’s doubles pair from Japan and Indonesia, respectively, went down by a set to Czech Republic’s Marie Bouzkova and Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo, they held a 3-1 edge in the second set before the match was called by the umpire.
Both the ball girl and Kato were in tears after the incident.
“You can tell it was inadvertent, she was hitting the ball back, but it’s the rule. If you hit a ball person or a lines person, anyone in the stands, it’s an automatic default. This was a tough scene,” one announcer on the Tennis Channel said.
“These things happen. The fact is, the rule is in place so that you avoid hurting or injuring anybody,” she added.
After the ball girl was struck, umpire Alexandre Juge originally gave Kato a warning, which received some heat from Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo, who asked for their opponents to be disqualified because of the rule-breaking.
“No, no, let me explain to you. [Kato] didn’t do it on purpose. [The ball girl] didn’t get injured,” Juge said, according to Reuters, after the pair yelled from across the net.
“She didn’t do it on purpose? She’s crying,” Sorribes Tormo said.
“And she has blood,” Bouzkova added, which caused the Juge to check in on the ball girl, who was in distress.
After speaking to the girl, tournament referee Remy Azemar and Grand Slam supervisor Wayne McEwen went to Court 14 to look further into the incident, which ended up in a disqualification of Sutjiadi and Kato and an end to the match.
“It’s just a bad situation for everyone,” Bouzkova said. “But it’s kind of something that, I guess, is taken by the rules, as it is, even though it’s very unfortunate for them. … At the end of the day, it was the referee’s decision.”
Bouzkova added that she did not see the ball girl get hit but mentioned “she was crying for like 15 minutes.”
Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo head to the fourth round to face Australia’s Ellen Perez and USA’s Nicole Melichar-Martinez.
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