On Friday we had been informed by a USTA official that “tomorrow Mr. Fognini will have a very bad day”. And he sure did. Following his behavior during his first-round match on Wednesday against fellow Italian Stefano Travaglia, Fabio Fognini has been “provisionally suspended from further participation in the US Open pending a Final Determination whether a Major Offense has been committed”. The disciplinary action, made official with a statement by the Grand Slam Board, follows a fine for a total of $24.000 that had been notified to Fognini on Friday for three distinct “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” violations.
The timeline
Upon his arrival at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows at around 11.45, while on his way to the locker room, Fognini was instructed to go to the office of the Tournament Referee, Brian Earley. The two remained in the office for 15-20 minutes after which they both reached the Players’ Lounge where they were joined by representatives of the ATP. After approximately 30 minutes, Mr Earley returned to his office alone and Mr Fognini went to the Players’ Garden outside the Players’ Lounge, where he talked to a few people. He seemed calm, he even cracked a few smiles, and subsequently he made his way back to the stairs leading to the Players’ Lounge. While walking towards the staircase he came across Italian journalist Ubaldo Scanagatta and he harshly confronted him shouting: “I am going to break that phone on your head! Keep writing, keep writing, imbecile, idiot…”.
Not the first time
There is an abundant literature concerning Fabio Fognini’s outbursts on court: his profanities cover the spectrum of politically-incorrectness quite well, but had never reached the peaks reached on Wednesday when chair umpire Louise Engzell had been called an “ugly c***-sucking wh**e”. In 2014 in Hamburg Fognini called his Serbian opponent Filip Krajinovic a “sh**ty gipsy”; during the same year, in Montecarlo he gave out to his team during a changeover accusing them not to “put their face in it”, just being there when things are good and not in moments of difficulty; and during the same tournament, he shouted to Roberto Bautista Agut across the court to “stop busting my b*lls and keep playing”.
Tennis brats
There have been several well-documented cases of players disqualified from a tournament for disciplinary reasons. The most recent one dates back to last February, when the final rubber of a Davis Cup tie between Canada and Great Britain in Ottawa the then-17-year-old Denis Shapovalov hit a ball in a fit of rage and ended up breaking hurting chair umpire Arnaud Gabas breaking some of his orbital bones. In 2012 Argentinian David Naldandian could not complete his final at the Queen’s Club in London after being disqualified for wounding a linesman with a kick.
But the most famous example of default during a Major Tournament dates back to 1990, when John McEnroe himself was disqualified during his match against Mikael Pernfors in the Round of 16 of the Australian Open when he ‘forgot’ that rules had changed just a few weeks earlier and he committed the third violation in a match (with the old rules, three violations would have cost him a game, not the match).
