Qualifier rushes to ball kid’s aid before upset win
MELBOURNE—Zeynep Sönmez rushed to the aid of an ailing ballkid in an interruption to play during her first-round upset win over No. 11 Ekaterina Alexandrova on Sunday at the Australian Open.
The 23-year-old Turkish qualifier was receiving in the ninth game of the second set when a ball kid wobbled, lost balance and stumbled backward near the umpire’s chair in sunny conditions at the 1573 Arena.
The ball kid stood up quickly but started wobbling again and Sönmez immediately held up her hand to suspend play. She went to the courtside and put an arm around the ball kid’s waist and helped her toward some shade.
Tournament officials moved quickly to help, but Sönmez had to lift the ball kid into a chair near the side of the arena. Medical staff took over to assess and treat the ball kid in the shade. It appeared to be a heat-related incident, with the temperature at the time around 29 degrees Celsius, but with high intensity at the surface level on the exposed hardcourt.
The players waited until the ball kid and the medical staff had left the arena and, after a delay of about seven minutes, continued the match.
Sönmez, ranked No. 112, broke serve in that game but lost the set before rallying to clinch it, 7-5, 4-6, 6-4, to advance to the second round in Australia for the first time.
Her best performance in five previous Grand Slam events was a run to the third round at Wimbledon last year.
The tournament said the ball kid quickly recovered but didn’t participate in the remainder of the match.
Zverev pulls through
Meanwhile, third-seeded Alexander Zverev shrugged off a sluggish start to power through his first-round match against rising star Gabriel Diallo.
Zverev, the runner-up at Melbourne Park last year, slumped in the first set against the 24-year-old Canadian before rallying on the back of his strong serve to win, 6-7 (7), 6-1, 6-4, 6-2, on Rod Laver Arena. He’s into the second round at Melbourne Park for the 10th straight year.
“Definitely when I saw the draw, wasn’t too happy to be honest,” Zverev said in an on-court interview, speaking of the tricky challenge presented by No. 41-ranked Diallo. “He’s very young, very talented. Unbelievably aggressive.
“First set wasn’t my best tennis, I would say. I was thinking, ‘can’t get worse than that.’ It got a lot better after that for me.”
