Sascha Zverev defeated his childhood idol Roger Federer in the semi of the ATP Finals, and that should have been one of the nicest moment of his young career.
Unfortunately, things got completely different because of a key episode that happened during the 2nd set tiebreak.
What happened
Roger and Sascha were fighting hard in the breaker. The Swiss was 4-3 up, but it was Sascha to be on serve. Federer managed to neutralize the serve of the German in the 8th point to get into the rally. Roger was gaining the upper hand to get closer and closer to achieve an important 5-3 lead. When Sascha was in a tricky position, he stopped the point because a ballboy dropped a ball behind Federer that was also about to strike the final blow. Eventually, the point was repeated, and the German did strike an ace giving a sense of unfairness to the numerous Federer’s fans (4-4). The breaker went on, and the German won it at 5 to conquer the match 7-5 7-6(5).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVfEpmTU8CQ
The apology
Sascha was gentle enough to apologize during the on-court interview (even if he didn’t have to) to say
“I want to apologize for the situation in the tiebreak. The ball boy dropped the ball, so it’s in the rules that we have to replay the point.”
The reaction from Federer
Roger wasn’t happy to repeat the point, but he accepted it graciously to say
“I understand the frustration. It’s just unfortunate circumstances. These things happen. Booing, I never like it. We see it in other sports all the time, but in tennis it’s rare. So when it happens, it gets very personal, and we take it very direct.
He doesn’t deserve it. He apologized to me at the net. I was like ‘you don’t need to apologize to me here.'”
The great intervention of the interviewer
Lara Croft, the on-court interviewer, was great in rescuing Sascha to comment later
“It was such an extraordinary and dramatic moment. We heard it all there.
“I thought Roger was very honest. He tried to look at it from his own perspective – maybe he wouldn’t have stopped playing.
“I happened to be sitting next to the court, and I saw the ball boy run out, and I saw the ball creeping into the play. Sascha Zverev, who was on the other end of the court, was always going to stop playing.
“It was within the rules, and that was it. Whenever Roger Federer is on court, it’s always overwhelmingly in favor of support for him. The crowd that was booing didn’t get the result they wanted. It was such a hostile and horrible moment to be standing there, and I felt for Sascha because I could see him rocked to the core.
I thought he was going to crumble. When you have that many people on you, in that atmosphere, the crowd needed to be shushed.”
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See how Sascha defeated Roger
