NALBANDIAN DISQUALIFIED

This year’s Queen’s Club tournament in London has been filled with bizarre results and strange occurrences, but the manner in which the final ended surely tops the list. The match between 6^th seed Marin Cilic and 10^th seed David Nalbandian began normally enough, the closely fought first set seeing Nalbandian playing marginally the better tennis.

The Argentine duly took the first set on a tie break, making his tie break tally 4-1 against Cilic over their careers. Marin managed to force a break of serve in the second set, which his opponent was clearly frustrated to give away. And then with the score at 3-4 to Cilic, Nalbandian suffered a moment of absolute madness which lost him the match and with it the championship.

Cilic had just hit an excellent winner on a break point, and started to make his way to his chair for the change of ends. But as he was doing so, Nalbandian kicked out viciously at the advertising board positioned directly in front of the baseline line judge. The board was only centimetres in front of the match official Andrew McDougall’s seat, and the board caught him in the leg, opening up a sizeable gash. McDougall reacted angrily, clearly stunned by the Argentine’s actions, and had to sit on the floor as a colleague supplied him with a tissue to stem the bleeding.

The umpire immediately discussed the situation with ATP supervisor Tom Barnes, and decided that the only course of action available to them was to disqualify Nalbandian, meaning he forfeited the match and with it the chance the win the Queen’s title. The rule here is clear – if an official of any kind is injured by a player in anger then that player forfeits the match. The crowd, many of whom could not see the injury clearly were angry that their spectacle was ending prematurely and began booing the umpire, but the deed was done, and Cilic collected the cup in circumstances other than those he was expecting.