Racquet-wrecker Medvedev leaves a bad taste at the US Open

But it’s not over! It’s match point, second serve! And now the umpire’s calling you out, the television ­cameras are swinging your way, and 14,000 people in Louis Armstrong Stadium are on your case. Stuff of nightmares, or what? The US Tennis Association (USTA) summarily revoked the photographer Selcuk Acar’s accreditation. In a kinder world they would have offered him counselling.

Still, at least the story moved on to some extent, courtesy of Medvedev who, on the brink of yet another grand slam defeat, launched a hyperactive rant in which he ­queried the umpire’s professionalism and his manhood, and then openly fomented a crowd interruption which prevented his opponent from serving for six whole minutes.

Benjamin Bonzi was so hollowed out that he lost that set, and then the next one 6-0, before somehow finding the resolve to take the match in the fifth, only for his winner’s interview to take place almost to a soundtrack of Medvedev beating a racquet to death against a chair. Shouldn’t Medvedev have been off the court by then? I guess that’s what they mean by “perennial showman”.

Of course, racquet-wrecking is a worn-out trope with almost zero shock value, and has been since Marcos Baghdatis, at the 2012 Australian Open, consecutively trashed four racquets, two of which were still in their plastic wrappers.

But aggressively rousing a late-night New York crowd against the umpire and your opponent… that seems new – worrying and startling, even in a country which we now know to have a surprisingly high tolerance for insurrection.

The umpire’s decision to award Bonzi his first serve again drew (in the words of the New York Post) “the ire of the crowd”. Inspecting the footage, though, I’m having ­trouble spotting ire specifically. Beefy grins from blokes in bucket hats, yes. Amused patrons laughingly offering a thumbs-down, certainly. And also someone on their feet smiling and seemingly chanting: “First serve! First serve!”, either in support of the umpire’s decision or because they’re slightly unclear what they’re meant to be upset about.

But I’m not sure I spy a riot here, inflamed by a possible misapplication of USTA rules & regulations, part 3, sub-section 30: “Delays during service/outside interference.” I reckon I spy panto – people enjoying a good boo because one happens to be on offer. I used to think it was only at Wimbledon that tennis got patronised to within an inch of its life by its paying audience. But now I’m starting to wonder whether it’s tennis’s fate not to be taken seriously in any part of the English-speaking world, no matter how seriously its players take themselves.

Nevertheless, six minutes of this cartoon protest gathered its own bullying menace and left a bad taste, which no amount of retrospective fining was likely to diminish. Mysteriously, Medvedev was docked $30,000 for the unsporting behaviour and $12,500 for the racquet smashing, yet nothing whatsoever for those lilac shorts. I mean, these things come down to personal taste, of course, but surely if anything merited thrashing against a chair-leg until it fell apart, it was those shorts. Anyway, the USTA’s fine is 40% of Medvedev’s earnings at the tournament. In other words, they haven’t fined him at all – they’ve just decided to pay him less.

One thinks back almost longingly to Jeff Tarango’s award-winning huff at Wimbledon in 1995. We’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of that one this year, and how golden it now looks. No ugly crowd incitement – just a volley of old-fashioned abuse for the umpire, a furious ball-chuck and a stormy exit stage left, because if you’re properly upset about something you’ll forfeit the match.

Very much the purist’s “mantrum”, one would say – a “mantrum” from a more innocent time. Unlike this one. “It was fun to witness,” Medvedev said afterwards, of that six-minute mutiny. Was it though? It made me want to shrink into a corner faster than Ruben Amorim during a penalty shootout.

Photograph by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images