Shanghai: Jódar warned after “give me the fucking towel” outburst at ball kid

An hour and ten minutes into the match on Wednesday at the Shanghai Masters, Rafael Jódar has just dropped the first set to Botic van de Zandschulp in a tie-break, the Dutchman having taken out Arthur Fils in the previous round. Two break points then slip away from him in the first game of the second set, while Van de Zandschulp towels down. His own towel is late coming; he demands it from the person whose job is to bring it over: “Give me the fucking towel!”

The warning follows at once, for unsporting conduct, from chair umpire Jimmy Pinoargote of Ecuador. “You know what you said, I can’t repeat it now. We don’t speak to them like that”, the umpire replies, and Jódar protests straight back: “We’ve been playing for an hour and ten minutes, man. The ball is only just out, I say one thing and you’re already giving me a warning. Unbelievable, you’re clearly not the one out on court.”

A frustration that keeps boiling over

For We Love Tennis, the 20-year-old has “once again lost his cool” and “seems to be finding it harder and harder to contain his frustration”. The site embeds the tweet that put the sequence online, with the original Spanish: “Dame la puta toalla”. The two outlets disagree on the status of the person involved, a ball kid for RMC Sport, a towel attendant for We Love Tennis; neither article reports a fine, an ATP procedure or a public apology.

The precedent goes back to the French Open: in the third round against Alex Michelsen, Jódar had been accused of bumping into a ball girl, before denying it as an “optical illusion”.

Ruud, on Thursday, in the last eight

On court, the incident did not cost Jódar the match: he broke soon after, took the next two sets 6-4, 6-2, and moved into a quarter-final against Casper Ruud, world No. 24, on Thursday. It is a match we are covering. We Love Tennis points to what the fortnight is worth: the qualifying places for the ATP Finals in Turin, where every round counts.