Sara Sorribes Tormo shoots down poor sportsmanship suggestions

French Open
Sara Sorribes Tormo

Sara Sorribes Tormo has hit back at the suggestion that either she or double teammate Marie Bouzkova acted in an unsporting way when they took on Miyu Kato and Aldila Sutjiadi.

Kato and Sutjiadi defaulted after the former lobbed a ball back onto their opponents side of the court inadvertantly striking the ball girl.

Sorribes Tormo insists that they acted within the boundaries of sportsmanship in a proffessional contest.

She admitted that they highlighted certain elements of the incident to the officials who didn’t appear to catch it completely.

“It’s a very bad situation that happened yesterday,” she said. “For Marie and me it’s tough to have all these kinds of things that people are saying. It’s not easy because the only thing we’ve done yesterday was go to the referee and explain to him what happened.”

“We were saying that the ball kid was crying because we were scared. Then we were saying that the ball was direct because he didn’t see the ball.”

The call would be made by the tournament supervisor in the end which Sorribes Tormo said showed that the right call was made.

“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. That’s the only thing I’m going to say about this,” Sorribes Tormo added.

Former top British man, Tim Henman believes that the blame for the incident lies squarely at the feet of Kato.

“It’s one of those where you have to take responsibility when you are hitting the ball around the court, even passing it to the other end. She’s just flicking the backhand, and it’s careless,” Henman told Eurosport.

“There’s no malicious intent, but when she’s hit the ball, it’s then gone into the ball girl, and she was very upset and distressed by that. It puts the umpire, supervisor and referee in a difficult position.”

It seems that Bouzkova and Sorribes Tormo had offered some sort of protest to the umpire only issuing a warning and this saw the supervisor called in.

The supervisor made the decision to default the pair and backed it up with a clear explanation.

“You’ve hit a ball, and it’s hit someone, and they’re injured,” the supervisor told Kato as he made the call to hand the match to Sorribes Tormo and Bouzkova, who had been trailing.

“You are responsible for that action. Even if it is an accident, you are still responsible for that action.”

READ MORE: Disqualified doubles pair divide opinion in French Open ball girl drama

Sara Sorribes Tormo

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