By Alberto Amalfi | Thursday, May 26, 2022
Irina-Camelia Begu made amends after nearly hitting a young fan with her racquet.
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Begu apologized and shared a heart-warming hug with a child after the young fans was left in tears narrowly avoiding the Romanian's racquet when it bounced into the court.
It all went down on cozy Court 13 during Begu's 6-7(3), 6-3, 6-4 Roland Garros second-round win over 30th-seeded Ekaterina Alexandrova.
After dropping serve to go down 0-2 in the decider, Begu bounced her racquet off the red clay. The racquet trampolined off the terre battue into the stands narrowly missing the child, who was in tears over the incident.
Journalist Jose Morgado was on site and shared this shot of the incident.
The supervisor was called out on court. Begu was hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct code violation.
The Romanian regained focus and won six of the last eight games to advance.
Afterward, Begu shared hugs and selfies with the young fan and apologized profusely.
"Well, it's an embarrassing moment for me, so I don't want to talk too much about it," Begu said. "I just want to apologize. My whole career I didn't do something like this, and I feel really bad and sorry. So I'm just going to say again, sorry for the incident and, yeah, it was just an embarrassing moment for me."
While no one wants to see a child reduced to tears at a tennis match, credit Begu for owning her error and apologizing.
"It was a difficult moment because I didn't want to hit that racquet, you know. It was -- you know, you hit the clay with the racquet, but you never expect to fly that much," Begu said. "It was, as I said, embarrassing moment for me and I just want to end it and not talk about it and apologizing again."
While a player can be defaulted for hitting a linesperson, as Novak Djokovic was famously defaulted from the US Open for inadvertently striking a linesperson in the throat with a ball, it didn't happen in a famed French Open semifinal.
Back in the 2003 Roland Garros semifinals, Guillermo Coria wound up and hurled his Prince racquet at the back wall accidentally hitting a ball kid. A mortified Coria apologized to the kid and fans and took his shirt off as an offering of apology. Coria was not defaulted from that semifinal though he could have been.
Begu may have another crowd issue on her hands in round three when she faces 227th-ranked Frenchwoman Leolia Jeanjean, who took down eighth-seeded Karolina Pliskova, 6-2, 6-2, earlier today.
Photo credit: Getty