(Reuters) – Tennys Sandgren was defaulted from a tournament on Tuesday when the American accidentally struck a line judge with a ball after himself being hit in the groin.
Sandgren, ranked 103rd in the world and top seed at the ATP Challenger event in Cary, North Carolina, doubled over after being struck by a ball bounced to him by a ball boy as he prepared to serve in the second game of the match against Christopher Eubanks.
Sandgren then swiped his racquet at the ball, which ricocheted off a fence and hit a line judge, earning him a default.
Video footage did not show the ball striking the official but showed the American shaking hands with his opponent after the default was confirmed.
Sandgren said on Twitter he had been defaulted for hitting the line judge after being hit by a ball thrown too hard by the ball boy but took responsibility for the incident.
“And just to be clear, this was all totally my fault,” he said.
Sandgren’s incident was similar to Novak Djokovic’s disqualification from the U.S. Open last year when the Serbian world number one inadvertently hit a line judge in the throat with the ball.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Peter Rutherford)
