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Russian tennis professional Andrey Rublev recently reflected on being defaulted from the Dubai Tennis Championships 2024.
Rublev's semifinal encounter with Alexander Bublik at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Center turned out to be a belter of a matchup until the dying moments of the deciding set. Notably, both of the preceding sets had gone into a tiebreaker.
The third set saw Bublik take a 6-5 lead before Rublev lost his cool at a line judge over a line call on the game point at 5-5. At this, a different official reported that Rublev had shouted 'f**king moron' in the face of the line judge.
Hence, the chair umpire and supervisor handed Rublev a default despite the Russian maintaining innocence.
The World No. 6 recently sat down with Russia-based media outlet Sports Express and opened up about his learnings from the disgraceful exit in Dubai. He admitted to making a mistake, saying:
"That, of course, in any case, it is inadmissible to raise your voice at a line judge, or at anyone at all. At a spectator, a chair umpire, a lineman, or some other employee. You shouldn't raise your voice at all. This is wrong, unacceptable and disrespectful. And this is even banal bad manners. I learned both this and the fact that some changes in the rules are still needed." (translated)
Andrey Rublev: "There must be some clear structure of punishments"
Further during the same interview with Sports Express, the host asked Andrey Rublev if tennis needed a solution similar to the VAR technology in football. In his response, the World No. 5 claimed that the VAR tech may work but the implementation may be tricky.
"This is one of the options, but the decision should be made by people who understand this. Because there are a lot of double standards," Andrey Rublev said.
He backed his argument by claiming that he had been involved in more extreme exchanges with the officials over the years but was never punished as severely as in Dubai. He said:
"I've had much worse situations before, when I allowed myself to communicate even more rudely, including with the judge on the chair. But the most I got for this was a warning for obscene language.
"Therefore, there must be some clear structure of punishments, where a list of some things that are unacceptable will be written down, for which a warning is issued, and where you have already exceeded the bar."
Andrey Rublev has notably failed to produce exceptional performances after the Alexander Bublik match. He suffered a third-round exit at Indian Wells a few days later and more recently lost his opener in the Miami Open men's singles draw.
