“Fuck you man, fuck you!”: American tennis player Frances Tiafoe loses his temper with an umpire after a defeat

Frances Tiafoe a violemment insulté l'arbitre. Capture d'écran X.

During his defeat in the third round of the Shanghai Masters 1000 on Tuesday, October 8, American tennis player Frances Tiafoe insulted the referee just after the end of the match, who he said was guilty of a refereeing error.

That's what you call a real meltdown. Beaten 7-5, 5-7, [5] 6-7 by the Russian Roman Safiulin (61st in the world), Frances Tiafoe began to insult the referee of the match several times, after more than three hours of combat.

“Fuck you man, Fuck you !", shouted the American as he passed in front of the referee at the end of the match, not shaking his hand in the process. “You fucked me!”, he said again in a fit of anger.

Tiafoe risks big

The reason ? While the score was 5-5 in the tie break of the last set, Tiafoe was penalized by the referee for having exceeded the time limit between two serves, thus forcing him to play a second ball.

Except that for him, he had already initiated his service movement by throwing the ball into the air before catching it, pretending that he had not thrown it well. But looking closely at the footage, it seems that Tiafoe had seen that he was going to exceed the time, throwing the ball in the air to avoid being caught by the patrol.

For his behavior, Tiafoe could risk a heavy sanction from the ATP with these repeated insults towards the chair umpire, while he ended up bowing out just after the sanction of the referee.