Jo-Wilfried Tsonga Yells At Heckler During Match, Says He'll "Kick His Ass"

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga received a code violation at the beginning of the fourth set of his third-round match against Nick Kyrgios for telling a person in the crowd that he was going to “kick his ass,” while Kyrgios, who on the first day of the tournament told a heckler to “shut the fuck up,” remained mostly calm and mentally engaged, winning three tiebreaks to take the match in four sets. This parallel universe is pretty weird but I don’t hate it.

It’s unclear who the usually reserved Tsonga was yelling at, though there was speculation on social media that it was someone is Kyrgios’s camp. (At various points throughout the match, Kyrgios had expressed annoyance with his own box for not cheering loudly enough.) After losing the third set in tiebreak and holding serve in the first game of the fourth set, Tsonga said, “Bring him down here and I’ll kick his ass,” which translates literally as “settle his account.” The chair umpire demanded the squabbling stop—“nothing good can come from this!”—but Tsonga continued to chatter and received a code violation.

After the match Tsonga explained what had set him off:

“Yeah, because on the set point, in between the first serve and the second, the guy was talking to me and telling me, ‘You are under pressure now, you are under pressure now,’ when I was bouncing my balls.”

“That’s it. I lost it and I drive a little bit crazy.”

“You know, it’s not fair. It’s not fair. But, yeah, that’s it. The guy was feeling safe because he was, you know, upstairs. I just tell him, ‘Come now to see if you feel the pressure or not.’ That’s it. But nothing really important.”