It seems the curse of the International in tennis is still with us. Not only are Italian players recovering from the ungodly time perforated player Toto touched bottom with a sweaty towel at Wimbledon, now Greek player Stefanos Tsitsipas has joined them, indulging in yet another long journey to the locker room.
Standing at the back of the court and receiving his bag, Tsitsipas took off his shoes and socks and offered a wry grin.
Later, addressing the crowd, he said he wasn’t doing it for pity, but simply because he was “emotionally drained.”
“Sometimes I take a long time to go to the toilet, and sometimes I find that it’s too long. It’s like you cannot get to the back because it’s a mini-court,” he said.
Earlier, crowd members booed when he took a bathroom break of two minutes, but didn’t react as badly when the player ventured to the box without pants.
“There was someone, he could see, and he was like, ‘Why does he have to go?’ And I’m like, ‘I’m just doing it because it’s a warm day, you know? It’s warm out,’” he said.
The fans eventually warmed to him once he made it through the first set 7-6. As he closed out the match, fans cheered and he made obscene gestures towards them, pretending to check his pocket for wallet, keys and keys to the men’s toilet.
“I definitely want to do something like that for a rowdy crowd, I know how it goes. I felt like if I didn’t do it, there’s a couple people screaming out for me to do it, and maybe it would be worse.”
Read the full story at Independent
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