Tennis player calls umpire a ‘f—ing t—’ at Queen’s

French tennis maverick Corentin Moutet shocked the well-heeled fans at Queen’s Club with a furious meltdown as he lost his second-round match against Britain’s Jacob Fearnley.

Moutet appeared to swear at chair umpire Adel Nour as part of an extended rant towards the end of his 6-3, 2-6, 6-2 defeat.

The world No 89 is renowned for being one of the spicier characters on the circuit, as well as a creative genius with a wide range of drop shots and ingenious tricks at his disposal.

He was unhappy with Nour during the final changeover of the match. He had just been docked a first serve for a second time violation, which followed an earlier warning for ball abuse when he smacked a ball clean out of the stadium.

Marching up to the chair at 2-5 in the deciding set, Moutet told Nour: “Saying time violations, it is your only job. I am talking to you because I have three balls in my hand. Then you give me a time violation and you say, ‘Don’t talk to me’. What is wrong with you? With your Rolex.”

He then appeared to call the umpire a f—ing t—, half under his breath, before returning to his seat and carrying on with: “I am running every day for three hours and you are telling me what I have to do. It’s crazy. This guy’s crazy! Killing me every day.”

When it comes to run-ins with players and officials, Moutet is a repeat offender. He was defaulted from a match in Adelaide in 2022 for saying “f— you” to an umpire, and lost his funding from the French Tennis Federation after another incident in the same season in which he and his opponent Adrian Andreev started pushing each other on the court.

Then, in Arizona in March, the chair umpire had to separate Moutet from another opponent – this time Alexander Bublik – after they argued about whether Moutet was ready to receive serve or not. In the middle of that imbroglio, Bublik asked: “You want to fight?”

The BBC, which is running live coverage of Queen’s, did not feel the need to apologise for Moutet’s swear words on Thursday, perhaps because it was not projected with quite the same volume as the rest of his outburst. Neither did Moutet receive a fine from tournament officials.

But commentators John Lloyd and Sam Smith could not help chuckling over Moutet’s behaviour. “The longer Corentin stays out here the more trouble he can get himself into,” Smith said, after the rant.

“He’s lost it,” chimed Lloyd. “‘This guy’s crazy?’ Look in the mirror.”

Fearnley showed great composure amid the chaos to close out his win, which earned him his first trip to an ATP quarter-final. “I never thought I would be in these moments,” said a delighted Fearnley. “I still can’t quite believe it.”

About Moutet’s tantrum, Fearnley added: “I played Corentin before, and yeah, I kind of know that’s what he’s going to do. He’s going to get angry. He’s going to talk to the ref. So when he was doing it, it wasn’t really a surprise.”

Alcaraz wins longest match in 34 years

Moutet was not the only player at Queen’s who fell foul of an umpire’s timekeeping. Around halfway through his three-set win over Jaume Munar, world No 2 Carlos Alcaraz received a time violation and replied that he had not had enough opportunity to dry his hands on his towel between points.

The contest between Munar and Alcaraz became out the longest match to be played at Queen’s in 34 years. Their struggle lasted 3hr 23min before Alcaraz floated a delicious backhand lob over the net-rushing Munar to seal his 6-4, 6-7, 7-5 victory.

Really, Alcaraz should have been back in the locker room an hour earlier. He held match point on his own serve at 6-4 in the second-set tie-break, only to double-fault and invite the persevering Munar back into the contest.

But then, this is exactly the sort of outing that Alcaraz often seems to struggle with. While nobody could compare the plush lawns of Queen’s Club to the proverbial wet Wednesday night at Stoke – especially in light of the baking sun – there was a sense of a foregone conclusion about the match-up. Munar arrived with a grass-court win ratio of just 27 per cent.

Afterwards, Alcaraz alluded to the lengthy, baseline-dominated nature of the rallies as he took a pen and decorated the camera lens with the words “3hr 30: were we on clay?”