Cameron Norrie: British tennis player throws racket into crowd in angry defeat at Auckland Classic | Tennis News happymamay

Britain’s Cameron Norrie avoided disqualification for throwing his racket at the crowd during his straight sets defeat at the Auckland Classic.

Nouri expressed his frustration after a weak response with a forehand that hit the net, giving his opponent Facundo Diaz Acosta a match point, and the Argentine player secured a 6-2, 6-3 victory.

The spectator was hit by the racket, but not by force, and he did not suffer any injuries, and Nouri only received a warning from the chair umpire.

Novak Djokovic was controversially disqualified from the 2020 US Open after accidentally hitting a ball at a line judge, but Stefanos Tsitsipas avoided defaulting to hitting the ball into the crowd at Wimbledon in 2022 in his fiery match with Nick Kyrgios.

“I didn’t mean to do it but it’s still not ideal to do it and I’ve never done anything like this before,” Norris said.

“She was laughing and I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she said, ‘Yes, I’m totally fine.’”

“It wasn’t a big deal. But as we’ve seen with some of the other players, you can easily default if you catch them in the wrong place or they’re not looking or something.”

“I didn’t mean to do that and I had no right to do something like that at all. I apologized very quickly and I want to apologize in general. I’m not happy with the way I behaved.”

Nouri struggled with injury throughout 2024, missing North American competitions in the summer, including the US Open.

However, he made a strong start to 2025 by reaching the quarter-finals at the Hong Kong Open last week, and will now head to Melbourne for the Australian Open, which starts on Sunday.

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