Spectators raise voices to protest tennis player's 'obnoxious behavior' toward ballgirl

Sports can be competitive and stressful, but true sportsmanship means staying grounded and kind. Pro tennis player Yulia Putintseva was reminded of this during the US Open. The Kazakhstani player was criticized for ignoring a ball girl mid-game, according to Bored Panda. Meredith Thompson, who goes by @MerThomp on X, shared a video of the incident.

In the 25-second video, the girl is seen holding three balls, waiting to give them to the player. Putintseva asks her to pass them to her with a hand gesture. She starts throwing them towards her one by one, but the player misses the first two. They just hit her torso and bounced away. After the first two, the tennis player asks the ball girl to throw the last one and she catches it. She then picks up one of the balls that fell on the ground earlier. Then, she walks off for her serve. Meanwhile, the crowd at the Louis Armstrong Stadium was heard booing the player for her behavior towards the girl. 

The video was captioned, "@PutintsevaYulia being a grownup today when losing to @JasminePaolini at @usopen." It garnered 1.1 million views on the platform. People were quite upset with the tennis player. @elmerengonbcn wrote, "Bravo for the attitude of the young tournament worker who maintained her professionalism." @jazz6stringfan expressed, "No excuse to treat people like this, especially a kid on a summer job who's probably nervous to begin with. Glad Paolini dispatched of her." @cmariedreams said, "If she's going to act like that, then she should have to chase down her own balls. Clearly, she's not interested in the child helping."

@andreasvierirah shared, "This should be penalized. It is a despicable attitude that deserves none of the people participating in the tournament. Penalized to learn education and to be people." Former World No.1 player Boris Becker also commented on the video. He said, "Who does Putintseva think she is...Terrible behavior toward the ball girl." Rennae Stubbs also didn't hold back from expressing her views on it and said, "The disrespect and obnoxious behavior is unbelievable and typical of her." 

However, Putintseva later apologized for her behavior on Instagram. She defended herself by saying that it was because she was losing the game. She wrote, "I want to apologize to the ball girl for the way I was when she was giving me balls. Honestly speaking, it was not about her. I was really pi**ed off at myself for not winning the game from the breakpoint and then got empty with my emotions and deep in my thoughts that I was not even focusing on what was going on and who gave me the ball." She concluded by appreciating the children. "All the ball kids were doing amazing as always at the Open."

The player lost the match to Italy's Jasmine Paolini, who secured a 6-3, 6-4 victory on August 31. Putintseva was born in Moscow and was playing for the Russian team until she switched to Kazakhstan in June 2012 because she felt slighted that the Russian Tennis Federation did not give her a wild card into the previous year's Kremlin Cup, reported The New York Times. Since then, she has received financial and technical support from the Kazakh federation. The Kremlin Cup was held every year in Russia until 2022 when it was suspended due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In 2019, Putintseva faced backlash after she showed the middle finger to the crowd at the Australian Open. That time, she lost against Switzerland's player Belinda Bencic and she showed her frustration and anger by walking off the court and upsetting the crowd. At the same tournament, she had also shaken her opponent, Barbora Strycova's hand too firmly after winning the first round against her. The player said at the time, "I like to squeeze [people's] hands normally, but she squeezed me, like, hardcore!"