The Australian Open began with a dramatic incident in a match involving Russian tennis player Ekaterina Alexandrova. The game, in conditions of hellish heat, had to be urgently stopped due to an incident that even precautions could not prevent.

“You don’t feel good”

Alexandrova came to Melbourne with the hope of a good result, and there were all the prerequisites for this. The Russian tennis player is currently ranked 11th in the WTA rankings. In the first round match, she was considered a big favorite, because her opponent Zeynep Sönmez had never risen above 69th place in the world rankings in her career. Before the Australian Open, she was not even in the top 100, but made it into the main draw through qualification.

The start of the match was left to Ekaterina, she was one game away from winning the first game. But the Russian woman managed to give the set to her opponent with a score of 5:2, losing five games in a row. The next segment didn’t start easily either. Our athlete allowed her opponent to make a break in the first game.

But by the ninth game, Alexandrova managed to straighten out the situation. She served for the set, with two rallies left to win. But when the score was 40:40, the game had to be stopped urgently. The girl serving the balls near the referee’s tower suddenly fell. She became ill in the Melbourne heat, despite wearing protective headgear. The temperature that day reached 28 degrees. The victim stood up, but had difficulty staying on her feet.

– She felt very bad. She said she was fine, but it was very obvious that she wasn’t. So I went up to her and said: “Sit down and drink something, you don’t feel well,” the BBC quoted Sönmez as saying.

On the way to the chair, the girl felt worse in Zeynep’s arms, which led to loss of consciousness. Alexandrova did not immediately notice the incident, since it happened on the side of the Turkish woman, but when she saw it, she also decided to help. She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a cold towel. Doctors quickly arrived to the victim, brought the girl to her senses and took her to a room under the stands. The stands responded to the action of the tennis players and doctors with applause.

Ekaterina Alexandrova / Photo: © Lintao Zhang / Staff / Getty Images Sport / Gettyimages.ru

“Being a good person is more important”

The dramatic incident brought down the mood of our tennis player. She gave away two rallies in a row, allowing her opponent to make a break and reduce the gap to a minimum. But Alexandrova immediately took her opponent’s serve, which led to her victory in the second set with a score of 6:4.

It seemed that Sönmez’s resistance would be broken, especially since Ekaterina took the lead in the decisive period with a score of 3:0. But out of the next seven games, the Russian was able to take only one, losing 4:6, which led to her unexpected departure in the first round of the tournament.

After the victory, the Turkish woman attracted a lot of attention from the press thanks to the timely assistance provided to the girl, but Zeynep is very modest. At the same time, the Turkish tennis player chose the very right words.

“When we were walking, she lost consciousness, and, fortunately, I caught her. She was shaking very badly. “I always say that being a good person is more important than being a good tennis player,” the BBC quotes Sönmez as saying.