Teen sensation Mirra Andreeva bowed out of Wimbledon in controversial fashion after being deducted a point on what proved the penultimate point of the match.
Andreeva had been warned for throwing her racket when losing the second set and got the point docked for hurling her racket again when serving 2-5 down in the deciding set.
It gave opponent Madison Keys a match point against the 16-year-old, which she converted at the first time of asking.
Russian Andreeva was bidding to become the youngest quarter-finalist at the tournament since Martina Hingis in 1997.
Already a fan favourite, there was those talking of her emulating Hingis in winning Wimbledon. There were echoes too of Emma Raducanu at the US Open, with Andreescu coming through qualifying here in her passage to the fourth round.
She remonstrated with the umpire at the time of her point deduction claiming somewhat unconvincingly that she had fallen when she threw her racket. She said: “I don’t understand what you’re doing. I didn’t throw the racket, I slid. I didn’t throw the racket. I fell. I slid and then I fell.”
And after losing 3-6, 7-6, 6-2 moments later she refused to shake hands with the official.
Andreeva had talked about working to control her temper on court and had done well to do so in her run to the third round at the French Open and again to the last 16 at SW19.
But that spilled over on court repeatedly in the second and third sets. She bashed her right thigh four times in quick succession at one missed opportunity and then flung her racket for the first time after losing a second-set tiebreak.
She said she agreed with the umpire’s call over the first racket incident but not the second.
Afterwards, she said: “The first warning I got, I think I deserved it. I threw the racket, and it’s a grass. She was right to give me a warning. For me, here she made a right decision.”
Of the second, she added: “I didn’t have any intention to throw the racket. I slid. Honestly, I thought that I will fall forward. Maybe it did look like I threw the racket. I don’t know. I didn’t see any videos yet. She made the decision, so the match is over now.”
It was an undulating match for Andreeva, who has been followed by the Netflix cameras all week for the next series of Break Point.
She had been 2-0 down, got level to 3-3 and then won seven straight games to take the set and a 3-0 lead in the second set. At one point she led 4-1 and looked on her way to the quarter-finals before Keys changed tactic.
The American had come to the net just six times in the first set but on 21 occasions in set two. It rattled Andreeva’s consistency from the back of the court and her game and her emotions crumbled with it.
Allied to her net approach, Keys went increasingly for the big shots too, hitting 21 winners to 18 unforced errors in set two.
She got the early break in the deciding set and a clearly rattled Andreeva could not find a way back into the match.
