Miyu Kato has claimed that many of her fellow professionals have offered their support to her following her disqualification from the French Open after she reduced a ball girl to tears by hitting a tennis ball at her. The Japanese player was thrown out of the women’s doubles tournament alongside partner Aldila Sutjiadi following the incident, which took place during their third-round match at Roland Garros on Sunday.
Kato was positioned close to the net and carelessly flicked a ball in the direction of the ball girl at the back of the court, which prompted her to start crying after she was caught on the back of the neck. Kato and Sutjiadi were initially given a warning by the umpire but their punishment was eventually upgraded to a disqualification after tournament referee Remy Azemar was called to the court to investigate.
A heartfelt apology was issued by Kato on social media in the aftermath of the match and she was quizzed further by reports on what happened after reaching the mixed doubles semi-finals with German partner Tim Puetz on Monday. She revealed that several of her fellow players had reached out to her in order to show their support, although she also insisted that she is simply trying to put the incident behind her as she looks to focus solely on playing her best tennis.
Kato spoke in Japanese before her answers were translated by a journalist in the room, who said: “She said that when she came to the site today, many players came over to her saying: ‘Put your face ahead, and we are all supporting you, following you’. That is good for her. And, of course, she is here to play tennis, so for today’s match she just walked on the court to play tennis, her best tennis.”
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Sara Sorribes Tormo, who was playing against Kato and Sutijadi when the ball girl incident took place, also spoke about what happened by revealing that she and her women’s doubles partner Marie Bouzkova were subjected to abuse for informing the umpire that the girl was crying, which ultimately led to Kato’s punishment being increased from a warning to a disqualification.
“Well, first of all, it’s a very bad situation that happened yesterday,” said Sorribes Tormo. “Also, for Marie and for me it’s tough to have all this kind of things that people are saying, it’s not easy because the only thing we’ve done yesterday was going to the referee and explain to him what happened.
“So, first of all, we were saying that the ball kid was crying because we were scared, because we were, oh, something happened. Then we were saying that the ball was direct because he didn’t see the ball. All the rest of the decision was taken by the supervisor.
“I think it’s not our thing, or we haven’t done anything bad. Yeah, that’s the only thing I’m going to say about this, what happened yesterday.”
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