A few days ago, a video of Stefanos Tsitsipas cursing his mother during a match in Rome went viral.

The Greek tennis player … blamed his mother for constantly talking and making remarks to him, but what annoyed him and broke out was the language Julia used, as his mother spoke Russian and Stefanos’ opponent was the Russian Danil Medvedev!

A few days later Stefanos Tsitsipas admitted his mistake from Paris and declared that he felt ashamed. “It was my big mistake,” Stefanos initially told Gree sports site SDNA and continued, “I’m ashamed that I spoke to my mother like that. At that moment, however, I had lost my mental stability in the match. I did not expect that my opponent would fight so hard, that he would put on such a good “performance” on the court. I felt like I was being stung (by the box) when I was playing. And it was the last thing I wanted, on top of what was already there.

Watching the video, I don’t think what happened is a good example for the children and the rest of the world. I believe the mother’s role is to stay out of coaching and not be given the opportunity to do that. In my case, though, my mother is knowledgeable and knows tennis, so it’s a little different. I hope this never happens again, because it is definitely not professional behaviour. The next time I might come to such a point, I’ll put this all through my mind before I say anything.” The father and coach of Tsitsipas, Apostolos, spoke about the same issue on Mega Channel:

“The unfortunate incident that is doing the rounds on the internet is nothing but the tension between a mother and a son. His mother acted with motherly feelings and tried to help her child. Stefanos wanted to show that he can handle the fight alone without the support of his mother because he didn’t want to show sensitive aspects of himself to the opponent.”

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