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Daniil Medvedev tantrums
ATP Tennis Players, Tennis News

Daniil Medvedev offers flimsy excuse for ugly finger incident in Paris


Daniil Medvedev has denied showing the Paris fans a middle finger as he walked off court following defeat to Grigor Dimitrov.

The Russian has been known to be a true antagonist with crowds around the world, and his relationship with the Paris Masters crowd was especially poor during a bad-tempered 3-6, 7-6(4), 6-7(2) defeat to the Bulgarian.

As he walked off the court, he appeared to be showing all sections of the crowd his middle finger, although he has claimed that was not the case. His explanation, though, did not appear to hold an awful lot of water.

Asked about the incident, Daniil Medvedev said: “No I didn’t [show the crowd the middle finger]. I just checked my nails, like this (demonstrating).

“No, really, it’s nothing more than that. Why would I do that to this beautiful crowd in Paris-Bercy?”

Medvedev endured a tumultuous time with the Paris crowd in general, and at one point refused to play until the stopped booing him. He, though, said that was ‘normal.’

“So what happened is I threw the racket, they booed,” Medvedev explained. “Normal.

“I don’t see a problem with that. I go to serve, they applause or something. But I wanna serve, they shouldn’t applause. So I still serve, the referee was talking during this, so Grigor was not ready. Okay that happens, but I get booed.

“I didn’t see why. So I didn’t wanna play. That’s actually the end of the story. I was, like, ‘Okay, ’til they [don’t] boo, I’m not going to play’.

“But Bercy crowd doesn’t stop to boo. So I was, like, ‘Okay.’ Then when I got a code, I was like, do I really want to get disqualified and finish the match on this note? No. So I went to play.”

READ NEXT: Paris Masters ‘does not work’ as a tournament, says an angry Daniil Medvedev

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Michael Graham, Tennishead.net Editor, has been a professional sports journalist for his whole career and is especially passionate about tennis. He's been the Editor of Tennishead.net for over 5 years and loves watching live tennis by visiting as many tournaments as possible. Michael specialises in writing in-depth features about the ATP & WTA tours.