Tennis Player's Meltdown Ends With Smashed Racket And "Broken" Banana

One tennis player’s violent racket-smashing meltdown at Sunday’s ATP Challenger final in Busan, Korea had devastating consequences for a banana.

In the first set, No. 88 Vasek Pospisil seized a 5-2 lead over No. 73 Matthew Ebden, only to lose in a tiebreak. His final shot of the set was a mishit forehand that careened into the sky. Immediately after bungling the forehand, Pospisil considered wrecking his shit, but checked his swing. He walked to his chair, accepted a towel from the ballperson, and gave his racket a curious, exploratory thwack against the bench. The Canadian checked his swing one final time before enthusiastically going in on the bench and the court’s surface, finally discarding the mangled carcass next to his racket bag.

A chair umpire and court supervisor spent the next few minutes trying to determine the nature of the debris that had gone flying through the air. The umpire offered an astute analysis of a metal bench. Finally, a ballperson helped the ump solve the mystery: “The thing which was flying was a piece of banana because the banana is broken.”

Pospisil lost the match 7-6(4), 6-1. In tennis, the yellow fruit isn’t always a beloved performance aid—sometimes it’s just collateral damage.

H/t Robby