French hothead and World No. 39 Benoit Paire defeated Martin Klizan 7-6(4), 6-3 in the first round of the Miami Open on Wednesday. As you might expect from a volatile head case, there were a couple racket casualties along the way.
The racket mistreatment started early, with this disgusted toss coming midway through the first set:
Then it escalated to this spike, when Paire missed a first serve down 30-0 near the end of the first set.
That broke his racket, so he fetched a new one and promptly dumped the ball into the net, sparking this beauty, which earned him a point penalty.
Paire is sponsored by Babolat. I emailed the company to see if he’s allotted unlimited rackets or, if like Yonex, it will fine players for smashing too many frames. I’ll update if I hear back, but Paire, at least, doesn’t think his sponsor minds.
“I’m a little bit injured [for] six weeks now and they know how I feel—not a lot of confidence,” Paire said, according to Baseline. “So OK, I broke some racquets, I’m really sorry for that, but the most important thing is to win some matches and to have another match.”