By Rory Carroll
(Reuters) – Nick Kyrgios continued to blast the chair umpire overseeing his 7-6(3) 6-3 loss to Jannik Sinner at the Miami Open after the match on Tuesday, where the fiery Australian was given a point and then a game penalty as he again unraveled.
After repeatedly berating umpire Carlos Bernardes for what he saw as Bernardes’ inability to control the crowd, Kyrgios received a point penalty in the first-set tiebreaker after telling a friend in the stands that he could do a better job of officiating.
The tournament wild card was then given a game penalty after he repeatedly yelled, “What is unsportsmanlike?” at Bernardes and whacking his racket against his bag and the court ahead of the second set.
The game penalty put Sinner up a break to begin the second, and the young Italian rolled from there into the quarter-finals.
“I just don’t think he controls the crowd well at all, in my personal opinion. People can have their opinions on it,” Kyrgios said in a news conference after the match. “I just don’t think my point penalty was worth a point penalty.”
Kyrgios nearly hit a ball boy with his racket after throwing it following his quarter-final loss to Rafa Nadal in Indian Wells earlier this month, which earned him a $25,000 fine.
He said he did not feel that fine was warranted, noting that he apologized to the ball boy and gave him a racket the day after the incident, and added that he did not think he had done anything worthy of a fine on Tuesday.
“I don’t personally care, because I know I’m a good person … but I don’t understand what could you possibly fine me for today,” he said.
“That’s the thing. He’s going to get nothing,” Kyrgios added. “He’s not even going to get a slap on the wrist for his dreadful umpiring performance today. Like he was horrendous.
“But the ATP won’t do anything about him. There will be no bad articles on him. He will just show up in the next event, and everyone just forgets how bad that was today from him.
“But again, I will have to deal with the negativity, I will have to deal with the bad comments, my girlfriend has to deal with the bad comments, my team has to deal with the bad comments. And ATP doesn’t give a (expletive). So that’s it.”
(Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler)
