Australian Open: “He sabotaged the fifth set and the referee let him…” The cold anger of a Frenchman after his elimination in the 1st round

Arthur Rinderknech did not digest it. Eye-catching against 16^e world Frances Tiafoe, the French (61^e) ended up giving up in five sets against the American. The 29-year-old Frenchman lost 7-6 (7/2), 6-3, 4-6, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3 after a fight lasting more than four hours.

If he was solid on serve, lining up 33 aces, Rinderknech also multiplied the unforced errors. Trailing two sets to zero, the right-hander seemed headed for a defeat in three sets when he finally managed to break “Big Foe” at 4-4 in the third set. But Tiafoe gradually regained the upper hand in the deciding set, winning 6-3 thanks to a double break.

And this, according to Rinderknech, with the help of the referee of the match in the decisive round, the Italian Alessandro Germani, the American having vomited at 6-5 in his favor in the fourth set. In bad shape, he will let the Frenchman come back to two sets all before using all possible artifices to force the decision.

“It annoys me”

“He knew how to use his experience, the referee let him play well which is difficult to accept. In my opinion, this fifth set is quite scandalous on the part of the referee but it's part of the game”, says , bitter, Rinderknech, as reported by our colleagues from RMC Sport. And to elaborate: “He's a guy who has been Top 20 for years and who has made the semi-finals of Grand Slams. He sabotaged the fifth and the referee left him. Today, for me, he had a clear advantage in the fifth set.”

However, the Frenchman did not want to place the entire responsibility for his defeat on the referee: “Am I losing the match because of that? Surely not. Would it have been more 'fair' (fair, Editor's note) if we had been refereed more fairly? Surely yes… But when the referee puts pressure on me in the first set for going over the time by one second even though we had gone between points. a minute fifteen repeated in the fifth set, there is inconsistency in the refereeing and that annoys me.”