Cameron Norrie avoided a disqualification after his racket hit a spectator towards the end of his 6-2 6-3 defeat against Facundo Diaz Acosta.
The Auckland-born Brit was hoping to claim his first title in his second home after reaching the final on two previous occasions.
However everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong as he was trounced by the Argentinian lucky loser and only won five games in the process.
Although as bad as the defeat was, it could have been so much worse as Norrie narrowly avoided a disqualification towards the end of the match.
Before match point to Diaz Acosta, Norrie chucked his racket in the air which hit a spectator in the crowd.
The spectator laughed off the incident and Norrie escaped the disqualification but not defeat in a big blow to his Australian Open preparations.
Speaking about the incident Norrie apologised and knows he will need to be more careful in the future, “I wasn’t meaning to do that but it’s still not ideal to be doing that and I’ve never done something like that,” Norrie was quoted by tennis.com as saying to the Associated Press.
“(The spectator) “was laughing and I just said ‘so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.’ And she said ‘yeah, I’m completely OK.’
“That was not a big deal. But as we saw with some other players, you can easily be defaulted if it catches them in the wrong spot or they’re not looking or something. I was not meaning to do that and it is completely not me to do something like that.
“I apologized very quickly and I want to apologize in general. I’m not happy with how I behaved.”
Norrie now heads to the Australian Open which starts on Sunday while Diaz Acosta will play compatriot Sebastian Baez in the second round.
