Twitter reacts to Fernando Verdasco’s antics towards young ball boy during China Open

Twitter reacts to Fernando Verdasco’s antics towards young ball boy during China Open

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By SportsCafe Desk, SportsCafe Editor

17

A series of Tweets from prominent personalities headed by Swiss legend - Roger Federer were directed towards 34-year old Fernando Verdasco after his recent outburst towards a young ball boy in China. Verdasco aggressively gesticulated at the ball boy to hurry up during last month's Shenzhen Open.

The recently concluded China Open saw Yoshihito Nishioka outplay Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the final to lift the coveted trophy in Shenzhen on September 30. But the competition came to the light for all the wrong reasons and the person to blame for that was 34-year old Spanish tennis player - Fernando Verdasco.

Verdasco’s treatment of a ball boy, who failed to bring him his sweaty towel fast enough has shed light on tennis players’ attitudes towards the child volunteers and has highlighted the need for change in the way things are done on the grand stage. The footages of where Verdasco aggressively signalled at the ball boy to hurry up during last month’s Shenzhen Open went viral on social media and saw Verdasco heavily criticised. However, the Spaniard has not commented on the incident as of yet. 

While condemning Verdasco’s behaviour, many pointed out that he was definitely not the first tennis player to treat a ball kid harshly. At the same tournament last week, Belarusian player  Aryna Sabalenka was caught in footage shaking an empty bottle in the apparent direction of a ball boy before she threw it to the floor in anger.

At this week’s Shanghai Masters, Roger Federer added that tennis has set the standard for many sports when it came to respectful behaviour and it should extend to the treatment of ball boys and girls as well.

“The ball kids are really important to us because they are also maybe the future of our game, like I was. You don’t want to have them leaving with feeling, oh my God, I was not appreciated or I was not liked or it was a horrible thing,”  said the Swiss champion, who was also a ball boy during his younger days.

However, the 37-year old legend also stated that emotions run high on the court and sometimes players get carried away in the heat of the moment. Federer added that players are under pressure not to hold game so it was quicker for the ball boy to hand them the towel rather than fetch it themselves.

“The show’s got to (keep) moving on. So all this stuff, it’s quite hectic to be quite honest, even though it seems like we have a lot of time,” he said to AFP sources on Tuesday.

Some other prominent people who took to Twitter to express the views on the same had the following to say:

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