The sports day: Referee “steals” a crucial point from the tennis star – and he loses the thriller

The sports day
Referee “stoles” a crucial point from the tennis star – and he loses the thriller

October 8, 2024, 7:12 a.m

Stan Wawrinka is cheated out of a point by the chair referee – and loses his second round match against the Italian Flavio Cobolli at the Masters tournament in Shanghai. The Swiss tennis professional, three-time Grand Slam winner, had a close match with Cobolli, who is 17 years his junior, and the opponents pushed each other into the third set after two tiebreaks.

One of the strangest scenes of recent years on the professional tour occurred there: Chair referee Carlos Bernardes awarded the first point of the game to Cobolli when Wawrinka served – even though it had belonged to the 39-year-old Wawrinka. Cobolli got the second point of the game quite regularly – and instead of 15:15, the scoreboard read 0:30. Because no one noticed the distracted Bernardes’ faux pas – neither the players nor their teams – Cobolli grabbed the only break of the entire match and won 6:7, 7:6, 6:3.