ATP Acapulco: Ouch, that caught the eye - John Millman with a bizarre injury
John Millman has to retire in the round of 16 of the ATP World Tour 500 tournament in Acapulco due to an eye injury. However, how the injury came about is extremely surprising.
by Stefan Bergmann
last edit:
Feb 23, 2022, 04:32 pm
It's not even halfway through the tournament week at the ATP World Tour 500 event in Acapulco, but the event can already point to some headlines that didn't just cause a stir in the tennis bubble. At first everyone was talking about the late end of the match of Alexander Zverev's first-round encounter, but the German's excessive freaking out in the doubles competition flooded the digital media on Tuesday.
On the other hand, a bizarre story that happened on the second outdoor court of the tennis facility in the Mexican coastal town has been a bit lost. On Tuesday at around 8:00 p.m. local time, American Marcos Giron and John Millman from Australia, who has been given a special exempt, met for their first-round encounter.
Absurd mishap leads to abandonment
Millman had surprisingly advanced to the semifinals in Delray Beach last week, defeating his Acapulco opening opponent Giron on the way there as well as the up-and-coming US boy Maxime Cressy and the Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov before then in the semifinals against service giant Reilly Opelka in three tight tie-break sentences was over.
In the renewed duel against Giron, the American got off to a better start, won the first set 7: 6 (3) and also led 2: 0 in the second round with a break. Millman was still a long way from defeat or even surrender - but then the unplanned mishap happened. When trying to take a rushing ball from the other side directly with the bat in order to prepare it for a service, the yellow felt ball bounces off the bat so badly that it hits the man from "down under" directly in the right eye.
The match was subsequently for the current world number 80. over, but nothing too bad should have happened in the incident. A few hours later, Millman presented himself on Instagram with a paved organ of vision and the somewhat self-silly line: "Always pay attention to the ball".