Cameron Norrie has said he is disappointed in himself for flinging his racket into the crowd and hitting a spectator during a tournament.
The woman was forced to shield her face as Norrie released the racket after losing a rally to bring up match point.
It hit her, but she was uninjured – and the British player immediately raised his hands in apology.
The 29-year-old got away with a warning from the umpire and went on to lose the Auckland Classic match 6-2, 6-3 to Facundo Diaz Acosta.
“I wasn’t meaning to do that but it’s still not ideal to be doing that and I’ve never done something like that,” said Norrie.
“She was laughing and I just said ‘so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that’. And she said ‘yeah, I’m completely OK’.
The world number 48 admitted he was lucky to escape punishment
“[It] was not a big deal,” he said. “But as we saw with some other players, you can easily be defaulted if it catches them in the wrong spot or they’re not looking or something.
“I was not meaning to do that and it is completely not me to do something like that. I apologised very quickly and I want to apologise in general. I’m not happy with how I behaved.”
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Novak Djokovic was disqualified from the 2020 US Open after accidentally hitting a line judge with a ball, but Stefanos Tsitsipas avoided punishment for hitting a ball into the crowd at Wimbledon in 2022.
Norrie is the second-highest ranked British man behind world number 15 Jack Draper.
He reached the quarter-finals of the Hong Kong Open last week and now heads to Melbourne for the Australian Open, the year’s first grand slam, which begins on Sunday.
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