French Open player was slapped with £8k fine for hitting child with racket

Daily Mirror

2 days ago

This former top-25 star exited the French Open in the first round due to injury, suffering another Roland Garros setback after being hit with a huge fine in 2022
Romanian tennis star Irina-Camelia Begu was fined £8,000 at the French Open in 2022 after an outburst saw her racket strike a child in the stands. The 34-year-old WTA veteran couldn't build on her stellar record at Roland Garros this time around.
Facing home favourite Leolia Jeanjean in the first round of the competition's latest renewal, Begu flew into the lead with a 6-0 opening-set win, and while the match looked at her mercy, a poor second set went the way of her French opponent 7-5.
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In the last set, however, Begu suffered an agonising calf injury, and though three games of the third were managed, Begu retired and exited the singles competition. Such misery unearths memories of a 2022 outburst in Paris, which saw the 34-year-old slapped with a hefty fine during a second-round matchup against Ekaterina Alexandrova.
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Three years ago, Begu, then ranked world No. 63, advanced to the second round after beating Jasmine Paolini, setting up a clash against 30-seed Alexandrova.
A toughly-contested opening set went the way of the seeded player, though Begu bounced back to claim the second 6-3. Yet, frustrations soon arose in the third set, as, when going down a break during a crucial time in the clash, Begu vented her annoyance by throwing her racket towards her bench.
The racket flew up when colliding with the court, unfortunately hitting a young boy in the crowd in the face. The match umpire immediately came down from his seat, as the crying child was situated directly behind him.
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Begu came to the scene of the incident and conversed with the umpire and the family of the boy who was hit. The tournament referee also came to the court to discuss the event.
In the end, the Romanian star was only handed a code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct and was not defaulted, much to the annoyance of her opponent.
Begu rallied in the third set, claiming it 6-4 to advance to the third round at Roland Garros. Yet, the code violation would not be her only punishment for the outburst. She would later be fined £7.9k and issued an apology.
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"It's an embarrassing moment for me, so I don't want to talk too much about it. I just want to apologise," stated Begu after the match. "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.
"It was a difficult moment because I didn't want to hit that racket. You hit the clay with the racquet, but you never expect to fly that much. It was, as I said, an embarrassing moment for me and I just want to end it and not talk about it and apologise again."
In the third round, Begu would face 2025 opponent Jeanjean, who was swept aside in straight sets 6-1, 6-4, with Jessica Pegula waiting in the fourth round.
Despite winning the first set and looking as though she could make her way past the fourth round in a major tournament for the first time, Pegula would take sets two and three 6-2 and 6-3 and knock Begu out. However, her second-round adversary, Alexandrova, felt Begu should have exited the competition earlier.
In a swiftly deleted social media post, Alexandrova expressed her frustrations, and captioned an Instagram post: "So disappointed to leave Roland Garros like that, I was trying to do my best, but seems like the rules were against me today. This shouldn't be happening. I hope after today's match rules will be improved for everyone's safety. We are responsible for our racket."