Marcos Baghdatis knows enough about rackets broken. The Cypriot player, who broke four rackets in 25 seconds four years ago at the Australian Open, has spoken about Grigor Dimitrov‘s bad behaviour at Istanbul during the final where he broke three rackets. The umpire gave him game a penalty on 5-0 in the last game.
‘It was amusing – said to L’Equipe Baghdatis, who understands Dimitrov – I think it’s fine. It humanises. People like it, I think, even if they whistle and boo. They look at it, they think it’s funny. The guy, he didn’t do anything bad, right … It’s good to get it out of your system from time to time.’
Speaking about his own experience, Baghdatis said: ‘I didn’t give a damn at all! People laughed watching it and so did I. To show how much I wasn’t ashamed, I showed it to my daughter too. She’s too small to understand, she’s only four. But she throws her racquet too!’
Only a few players break rackets. Baghdatis explains why: ‘You know why it doesn’t happen that often? Because we’re afraid of the ATP. We become machines. We can’t say “shit”, we can’t say “whore”, we can’t say anything. I took a warning against Gilles (Simon) because I said “fuck”. When you see what happens in football (soccer) … the ATP should do something about that.’
The solution was proposed by Tommy Robredo: ‘[He] had a good Idea. Put in a sort of shed beside the bench, a sort of small compartment where you can unstress. There are cameras inside and everyone can watch us scream, unwind, hit anything we want.’
Tennisworldusa