French qualifier defends asking ball girl to peel banana on court
French player Elliot Benchetrit has denied having shown a lack of respect to a ball girl at the Australian Open by asking her to peel a banana for him.
The incident happened during qualifying in Melbourne last Saturday and created a social-media storm when a video of it emerged.
Between games, Benchetrit asked the ball girl to pass him a banana, then requested she peel it for him. The umpire intervened and told the ball girl she need not do so.
Benchetrit had an explanation for the unusual request when speaking yesterday after his 6-2, 6-0, 6-3 defeat in the first round of the tournament by Japan’s Yuichi Sugita.
“I had put some powder on my hands to stop sweating,” Benchetrit said. “The bananas are very hard to peel here because they don’t have a stem. I asked the ball kid nicely because she had already peeled one for me at the beginning of the match.
“The umpire intervened and told me: ‘She’s not your slave, you cannot ask her that’. He said ‘slave’!”
Meanwhile, top-ranked doubles player Robert Farah has been provisionally suspended by the International Tennis Federation pending a disciplinary hearing into his positive doping test.
Farah had been due to play in Melbourne with long-time doubles partner Juan Sebastian Cabal until his doping case emerged last week. The pair won the last two grand slam titles at Wimbledon and the US Open.
Farah denies wrongdoing and blamed his positive test for the steroid Boldenone on eating contaminated meat in his native Colombia. The ITF said Farah did not challenge the provisional suspension from playing.