VIDEO | Ball boy shows courage in face of Alexandre Zverev’s insane racquet-breaking rage

01/21/2019

While most sports have the ability to frustrate players insanely, nothing exhibits it any better than tennis where players are often seen venting their annoyance on their racquets. Alexander Zverev was in a similar situation today although that didn’t stop the ball boy to do his job diligently.

After a decent start to the first Grand Slam of the season, the phase of upsets have seemingly begun, after Stefanos Tsitsipas ousted Roger Federer in one of the round of 16 clashes at the Rod Laver Arena on Sunday, Monday saw World No. 4 Alexander Zverev going down against the 16th seed Canadian Milos Raonic.

However, the 21-year-old German international couldn’t seemingly take defeat the same way as Federer did and after Raonic was leading 4-1 in the second set, a calm-looking Zverev returned to his seat took his towel from the ball boy and smashed his racquet violently, deforming it into an alien object. But, while the commentator had a laugh about it, one of the ball boys standing behind Zverev was in a fix.

He was going to roll down the ball to the other end when Zverev started hitting his racquet to the ground vehemently. It did petrify the kid who stood his ground, waited to evaluate the situation. Zverev was looking to continue smashing the other arc of his racquet’s frame before annihilating one side. And the ball boy went on doing his duty at a time when it was easy to just wait for the player to calm down, which would have encouraged his behaviour more than anything.

Zverev was given a warning for racquet abuse. And after the match, Zverev said, “Yeah, it [breaking the racquet] made me feel better. I was very angry, so I let my anger out.”